PO Box 188
Admin City: Mandeville
Admin State/Province: LA
Admin Postal Code: 70470
Admin Country: US
and his phone number (which I am not going to post)
Although in all fairness, most websites go to a corporate address (Both Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s do) however, this could be used to find out someone’s address if they have not disguised it in some way.
I tried this on a semi-famous model friend who I knew at one time (who uses a stage name) and it gave her phone number , real name and home address.
I showed this to her (actually emailed it to her) and she was quite surprised.
However, I suppose most people here are familiar with this (or maybe not)
WHOIS dates back to ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. There are readily available proxy services that allow an individual or entity to maintain anonymity if they wish to do so. As Telemark says, this is very well known.
It’s kind of like having a landline and being listed in the white pages. If you don’t understand that phone books exist and that you have to pay additional money for an unlisted number, one might question your fitness to maintain telephone service.
I seem to remember that in the early 80s or so if a landline was created with a ‘feminine’ sounding first name as the owner they would by default not print the address. Apparently some single women living on their own had been preyed upon by criminals this way, resulting in lawsuits.
My website host uses his address/info for me for a small fee which includes making sure everything involved in having a website is up to date. It’s not that I am trying to be anonymous or anything it’s just a convenience.
It is well known to anyone familiar with website hosting. However, I will bet that many people are not familiar with it. I wasn’t until a few days ago.
I get an offer for that service every year when I renew my domain. Since it’s child’s play to find that information through other channels I don’t use it.
DNS lookup can expose a lot of half-smart operators who don’t realize that information is publicly exposed. At least once I called up someone at what turned out to be their home phone to point out that I really, really didn’t want them creating any more bogus accounts on a forum I ran.
