6 ms·

Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

137 points by wlonkly 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rongrimes 3y ago
So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H whois look ups. geektools always seemed able to dig a little deeper than anybody else - I'll miss them.
superkuh 3y ago
Also, GDPR has put potential legal liability pressure on registrars and most have dropped having any useful WHOIS information.
- technion 3y ago
  Public who's details have become absurd. Register any domain and choose not to use domain privacy. Your inbox will fill up over the next hour with people wanting to sell you seo services or a new WordPress installation. I don't mean five or five or six spam emails, I mean you could see over a hundred umin the first hour . Such mailboxes are sure to become unusable .
  - ghuntley 3y ago
    emails? I wish. I get random calls from India for “web site design and seo optimisation” that got my digits from whois info.
  - sen 3y ago
    That’s exactly why I’ve used an “admin@“ address for decades now on email registrations. It has a filter that will then redirect anything from the registrar’s domain and junk anything else.
    - geraldhh 3y ago
      sweet! hoping your registrar does indeed send his 'very important mail' from that domain .
    - Aachen 3y ago
      That's fun and I like the idea, until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain or it'll be terminated within two weeks. Who knows what email sending service or domain they'll decide to use. (OVH, for instance, sent me this not only from a different domain, but from a different country TLD altogether than previous emails from them.) Do you also have a dedicated phone number for your registrar to call? And home address? The whole thing is a bit iffy, I'd much rather that my personal information remains with the party that can relay any relevant queries. Another problem with using an inbox @ your domain is that, when there's a problem with your domain... good luck receiving that email. I have two accounts with the registrar for different domains and they point to each other. Not great, perhaps I should open a hotmail for this that relays copies of any emails so I still get the notifications during normal times, but it's something.
      - talideon 3y ago
        > until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain ICANN don't do that. Your _registrar_ is required by ICANN policies (search for "Whois Data Reminder Policy") to send you notifications to ensure your contact information is current. Whether your domain gets terminated or not is largely down to your registrar, but if your contact details aren't accurate, you probably aren't getting billing notifications either.
        Aachen 3y ago
        Um, I can sign up as John Doe being the domain owner but it's not required that Ms. John also pays the bills upon renewals. Never had a problem with domains under anonymised names. And it is ICANN policy, it's not the registrar doing this for fun and profit. Per their new-ish policy, it is that my registrar indeed sent that email from a random domain they had laying around.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Don’t forget your physical mailbox too
    - steve_taylor 3y ago
      I've received a few official-looking fake renewal notices over the years.
      - wlesieutre 3y ago
        I've been using whois privacy for years mostly because of this, but IIRC the bulk of my spam was from Comcast Business. Because anyone who registers a personal website must need a business internet connection.
  - lazide 3y ago
    If you register in a tld which doesn’t allow privacy (.net or .us? Forget which) everything leaks. Kiss goodbye to your phone number. I accidentally did this and got 50 calls within the first 8 hrs. It was insane.
    - zinekeller 3y ago
      It was .us, operated by GoDaddy ;) Not surprised on this, especially on the GoDaddy part. Although .uk also has no-proxies rule, at least Nominet themselves don't reveal your details if you're an individual even before GDPR (the idea being that if you're a company you have enough money to handle public requests).
      - CydeWeys 3y ago
        For what it's worth, .us is the ccTLD for the United States, and policies for it like "You can't hide your WHOIS info" would be set by the US government, not by GoDaddy. GoDaddy Registry as the backend registry service provider isn't setting the policies for a ccTLD.
        zinekeller 3y ago
        > policies for it like "You can't hide your WHOIS info" would be set by the US government I have actually checked this, and you're (partially) wrong on this one. To be fair, I was also wrong that GoDaddy (within limitations set by the Department of Commerce) has free reign here. The actual process is more boring: while the US DOC has veto powers, in practice it's the .US Stakeholder Council (https://www.about.us/stakeholders https://www.about.us/stakeholders) which decides on matters about .US policies. On that note, in the specific issue of no-proxies rule it was the US DOC who enforced it, not GoDaddy or Neustar (which was the previous operator): https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar4.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar...
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      It's interesting to see the evolution of the .de whois. Germany is one of these countries that unsurprisingly doesn't allow domain privacy for various legal reasons, but this clashes with the equally strong privacy desire. Back in (not so) ancient times you just got all info with a normal whois, then the whois started giving you less info and told you to go to the registrar's website (denic.de) where you had to fill out a captcha. With GDPR came some checkboxes to verify you have legitimate reasons to get this info. Now even that is gone, you have to either send them an email or fill out a pdf, sign it and email it to them.
  - pablog8 3y ago
    Choose to use domain privacy and you will receive the same spam but with your email proxied/obfuscated. Happened to me last week.
    - lloydatkinson 3y ago
      I haven’t experienced this with Google domains or Cloudflare.
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  WHOIS is still useful for telling you registrar, registration date, and nameservers. That's mostly what I ever used it for.
  - b112 3y ago
    You need to dig the root nameservers these days, if you really want accurate glue record lookups. Don't trust whois.
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      Two different systems operating at different layers, though. I WHOIS the domain when I want to know which nameservers the registry thinks the domain should have. You can then dig in DNS to see what those nameservers are responding, but that's a separate level. (Note: I work in this field.)
      - b112 3y ago
        It's unclear if you get what I mean, because you can never use whois, to determine what a glue record is, though. Whois is not updated reliably these days. For example, you cannot 'whois example.org', see DNS servers listed, and think "OK, those are the glue servers!". Nope. You need to dig at the root .org DNS servers, and find out what they have configured as glue records, and then query that. $ dig +short org. NS c0.org.afilias-nst.info. d0.org.afilias-nst.org. b0.org.afilias-nst.org. a0.org.afilias-nst.info. b2.org.afilias-nst.org. a2.org.afilias-nst.info. $ dig +norec @a0.org.afilias-nst.info. example.org. NS <snip> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: example.org. 3600 IN NS a.iana- servers.net. example.org. 3600 IN NS b.iana-servers.net. Now you know what the glue records are for a domain. Trusting whois, which is sporadically updated these days, and often inaccurate, won't necessarily help anything. I get why you do trust it, it used to be reliable, it used to be accurate, it just isn't in many cases any more. As for what the registrar thinks, I wouldn't trust whois for that, either. Not these days. I'd want to query the registrar directly, to find out. (Maybe you meant all of this, but at least it's clear for others now, either way)
dontbesquare 3y ago
sudo apt-get install whois whois google.com
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  Worth pointing out that WHOIS is sunsetting in January 2025 and that RDAP (already live) is the replacement.
  - pabs3 3y ago
    Is this what you mean by WHOIS sunsetting? Do you have any more/other details? https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-rdap-amendments-04-05-2023-en https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-...
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      Yes, that's it exactly, particularly this part: > The global amendments specify operational requirements for providing Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS) via RDAP and detail the sunset of certain obligations for registries and registrars to provide RDDS via the WHOIS protocol by 28 January 2025. Note that, because registries will be contractually mandated to support RDAP, and that if they choose to continue supporting WHOIS they will be subject to additional uptime/monitoring requirements on WHOIS that they wouldn't be if they simply dropped WHOIS, most are planning on dropping WHOIS as soon as possible.
sbuttgereit 3y ago
Awww... this was my go-to since the 90s. I loved the simplicity of the place. Great nostalgia. To be fair, I haven't use it much over the past decade or so mostly because the nature of my work has changed and the info has become increasingly useless over time.... but just a couple of weeks ago I gave it a go just to see if it was still around. I guess that test didn't age well.
netzego 3y ago
F
talideon 3y ago
The only reason why WHOIS actually needed to stick around for so long is because of thin registries (.com and .net are examples) where the registrar manages the contact information for the domain rather than the registry. When you do a domain transfer, the registrars involved are required to get confirmation of the transfer, which means that the gaining registrar needs a way to query the contact information for the domain. With thick registries, all the gaining registrar needs to query this is the EPP key (AKA the transfer code, transfer key, authinfo, &c.) and the domain name, and then they have read-only access to the domain object and any contact object associated with the domain in question. With thin registries, there's no such thing, so the only way to implement ICANN's Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy is to query WHOIS. Up until ICANN finally forced a standard format on gTLD WHOIS responses, this was a nightmare as all too many registries would go out of their way to make it difficult to get any information out of WHOIS. I'm glad to see WHOIS starting to die for domain names and be replaced with RDAP.
iorrus 3y ago
I used to use this when I was just starting out on the web and the internet was still new. I used it quite frequently over the years initially but not for a long time. I feel a bit sad, it represented the hacker culture of the early web which unfortunately is long gone. A different time.
appleaday1 3y ago
I dont feel so good about this.
vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago
[dead]

137 points by wlonkly 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H whois look ups. geektools always seemed able to dig a little deeper than anybody else - I'll miss them.

superkuh 3y ago

Also, GDPR has put potential legal liability pressure on registrars and most have dropped having any useful WHOIS information.

technion 3y ago
Public who's details have become absurd. Register any domain and choose not to use domain privacy. Your inbox will fill up over the next hour with people wanting to sell you seo services or a new WordPress installation. I don't mean five or five or six spam emails, I mean you could see over a hundred umin the first hour . Such mailboxes are sure to become unusable .
- ghuntley 3y ago
  emails? I wish. I get random calls from India for “web site design and seo optimisation” that got my digits from whois info.
- sen 3y ago
  That’s exactly why I’ve used an “admin@“ address for decades now on email registrations. It has a filter that will then redirect anything from the registrar’s domain and junk anything else.
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    sweet! hoping your registrar does indeed send his 'very important mail' from that domain .
  - Aachen 3y ago
    That's fun and I like the idea, until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain or it'll be terminated within two weeks. Who knows what email sending service or domain they'll decide to use. (OVH, for instance, sent me this not only from a different domain, but from a different country TLD altogether than previous emails from them.) Do you also have a dedicated phone number for your registrar to call? And home address? The whole thing is a bit iffy, I'd much rather that my personal information remains with the party that can relay any relevant queries. Another problem with using an inbox @ your domain is that, when there's a problem with your domain... good luck receiving that email. I have two accounts with the registrar for different domains and they point to each other. Not great, perhaps I should open a hotmail for this that relays copies of any emails so I still get the notifications during normal times, but it's something.
    - talideon 3y ago
      > until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain ICANN don't do that. Your _registrar_ is required by ICANN policies (search for "Whois Data Reminder Policy") to send you notifications to ensure your contact information is current. Whether your domain gets terminated or not is largely down to your registrar, but if your contact details aren't accurate, you probably aren't getting billing notifications either.
      - Aachen 3y ago
        Um, I can sign up as John Doe being the domain owner but it's not required that Ms. John also pays the bills upon renewals. Never had a problem with domains under anonymised names. And it is ICANN policy, it's not the registrar doing this for fun and profit. Per their new-ish policy, it is that my registrar indeed sent that email from a random domain they had laying around.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Don’t forget your physical mailbox too
  - steve_taylor 3y ago
    I've received a few official-looking fake renewal notices over the years.
    - wlesieutre 3y ago
      I've been using whois privacy for years mostly because of this, but IIRC the bulk of my spam was from Comcast Business. Because anyone who registers a personal website must need a business internet connection.
- lazide 3y ago
  If you register in a tld which doesn’t allow privacy (.net or .us? Forget which) everything leaks. Kiss goodbye to your phone number. I accidentally did this and got 50 calls within the first 8 hrs. It was insane.
  - zinekeller 3y ago
    It was .us, operated by GoDaddy ;) Not surprised on this, especially on the GoDaddy part. Although .uk also has no-proxies rule, at least Nominet themselves don't reveal your details if you're an individual even before GDPR (the idea being that if you're a company you have enough money to handle public requests).
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      For what it's worth, .us is the ccTLD for the United States, and policies for it like "You can't hide your WHOIS info" would be set by the US government, not by GoDaddy. GoDaddy Registry as the backend registry service provider isn't setting the policies for a ccTLD.
      - zinekeller 3y ago
        > policies for it like "You can't hide your WHOIS info" would be set by the US government I have actually checked this, and you're (partially) wrong on this one. To be fair, I was also wrong that GoDaddy (within limitations set by the Department of Commerce) has free reign here. The actual process is more boring: while the US DOC has veto powers, in practice it's the .US Stakeholder Council (https://www.about.us/stakeholders https://www.about.us/stakeholders) which decides on matters about .US policies. On that note, in the specific issue of no-proxies rule it was the US DOC who enforced it, not GoDaddy or Neustar (which was the previous operator): https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar4.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar...
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    It's interesting to see the evolution of the .de whois. Germany is one of these countries that unsurprisingly doesn't allow domain privacy for various legal reasons, but this clashes with the equally strong privacy desire. Back in (not so) ancient times you just got all info with a normal whois, then the whois started giving you less info and told you to go to the registrar's website (denic.de) where you had to fill out a captcha. With GDPR came some checkboxes to verify you have legitimate reasons to get this info. Now even that is gone, you have to either send them an email or fill out a pdf, sign it and email it to them.
- pablog8 3y ago
  Choose to use domain privacy and you will receive the same spam but with your email proxied/obfuscated. Happened to me last week.
  - lloydatkinson 3y ago
    I haven’t experienced this with Google domains or Cloudflare.
CydeWeys 3y ago
WHOIS is still useful for telling you registrar, registration date, and nameservers. That's mostly what I ever used it for.
- b112 3y ago
  You need to dig the root nameservers these days, if you really want accurate glue record lookups. Don't trust whois.
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    Two different systems operating at different layers, though. I WHOIS the domain when I want to know which nameservers the registry thinks the domain should have. You can then dig in DNS to see what those nameservers are responding, but that's a separate level. (Note: I work in this field.)
    - b112 3y ago
      It's unclear if you get what I mean, because you can never use whois, to determine what a glue record is, though. Whois is not updated reliably these days. For example, you cannot 'whois example.org', see DNS servers listed, and think "OK, those are the glue servers!". Nope. You need to dig at the root .org DNS servers, and find out what they have configured as glue records, and then query that. $ dig +short org. NS c0.org.afilias-nst.info. d0.org.afilias-nst.org. b0.org.afilias-nst.org. a0.org.afilias-nst.info. b2.org.afilias-nst.org. a2.org.afilias-nst.info. $ dig +norec @a0.org.afilias-nst.info. example.org. NS <snip> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: example.org. 3600 IN NS a.iana- servers.net. example.org. 3600 IN NS b.iana-servers.net. Now you know what the glue records are for a domain. Trusting whois, which is sporadically updated these days, and often inaccurate, won't necessarily help anything. I get why you do trust it, it used to be reliable, it used to be accurate, it just isn't in many cases any more. As for what the registrar thinks, I wouldn't trust whois for that, either. Not these days. I'd want to query the registrar directly, to find out. (Maybe you meant all of this, but at least it's clear for others now, either way)

dontbesquare 3y ago

sudo apt-get install whois whois google.com

CydeWeys 3y ago
Worth pointing out that WHOIS is sunsetting in January 2025 and that RDAP (already live) is the replacement.
- pabs3 3y ago
  Is this what you mean by WHOIS sunsetting? Do you have any more/other details? https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-rdap-amendments-04-05-2023-en https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-...
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    Yes, that's it exactly, particularly this part: > The global amendments specify operational requirements for providing Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS) via RDAP and detail the sunset of certain obligations for registries and registrars to provide RDDS via the WHOIS protocol by 28 January 2025. Note that, because registries will be contractually mandated to support RDAP, and that if they choose to continue supporting WHOIS they will be subject to additional uptime/monitoring requirements on WHOIS that they wouldn't be if they simply dropped WHOIS, most are planning on dropping WHOIS as soon as possible.

sbuttgereit 3y ago

Awww... this was my go-to since the 90s. I loved the simplicity of the place. Great nostalgia. To be fair, I haven't use it much over the past decade or so mostly because the nature of my work has changed and the info has become increasingly useless over time.... but just a couple of weeks ago I gave it a go just to see if it was still around. I guess that test didn't age well.

netzego 3y ago

talideon 3y ago

The only reason why WHOIS actually needed to stick around for so long is because of thin registries (.com and .net are examples) where the registrar manages the contact information for the domain rather than the registry. When you do a domain transfer, the registrars involved are required to get confirmation of the transfer, which means that the gaining registrar needs a way to query the contact information for the domain. With thick registries, all the gaining registrar needs to query this is the EPP key (AKA the transfer code, transfer key, authinfo, &c.) and the domain name, and then they have read-only access to the domain object and any contact object associated with the domain in question. With thin registries, there's no such thing, so the only way to implement ICANN's Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy is to query WHOIS. Up until ICANN finally forced a standard format on gTLD WHOIS responses, this was a nightmare as all too many registries would go out of their way to make it difficult to get any information out of WHOIS. I'm glad to see WHOIS starting to die for domain names and be replaced with RDAP.

iorrus 3y ago

I used to use this when I was just starting out on the web and the internet was still new. I used it quite frequently over the years initially but not for a long time. I feel a bit sad, it represented the hacker culture of the early web which unfortunately is long gone. A different time.

appleaday1 3y ago

I dont feel so good about this.

vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago

[dead]