As the name suggests WhoIs Analyzer Pro, which is available for Mac OS and Windows OS, lets the user to look up WhoIs information on a particular domain. This introduction will probably not convince anyone that he or she needs it beyond what they already have. For example, Mac OS comes with Network Utility. There are a couple of features that might convince you that WhoIs Analyzer is better than Network Utility. No. 1, you can look up network company’s WhoIs with its autonomous system number (ASN). No. 2, you can save WhoIs information in HTML.
What is WhoIs information, anyway? If you don’t run a website, you may not know what it is. Simply stated, it’s just a domain registration and nothing else. When you register a domain, your domain registrar requires that you provide your address and phone number. And this information will be freely accessible through InterNIC, an organization operated by ICANN. ICANN is a private organization licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Using WhoIs Analyzer Pro is pretty easy. All you have to do is enter an IP address, domain name or ASN. For example, if I want to look up WhoIs information on yahoo.com, I just type the domain (See Screenshot 01.) and press the return key. Then yahoo.com’s WhoIs information will appear. (See Screenshot 02.) This information contains registrar’s name, registrant’s name, address, phone number, e-mail address, name servers, domain creation date, registration expiration date and so forth. Likewise, you can look up WhoIs information, using an IP address and an ASN. (See Screenshot 03-4.)
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What are autonomous system numbers, by the way? According to APNIC, an autonomous system is defined as “a group of IP networks operated by one or more network operator/s which has a single and clearly defined external routing policy. Exterior routing protocols are used to exchange routing information between Autonomous Systems.” These numbers are also used to identify individual autonomous systems. For example, 209 is the identifier for Qwest, and 2914 is the identifier for Verio (NTT America).
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Let’s look at Screenshot 02 agan. What is the referral URL? According to the online manual available at developer’s website, WhoIs Analyzer Pro is able “to follow referrals to get you the most detailed information.” (See Screenshot 05.) Honestly, I’m not 100% sure what it is even after reading this explanation.
Anyway, what’s good about WhoIs Analyzer Pro is that you can save the result of your search in HTML. (See Screenshot 06.) Simply, click on Save Result at the top menu bar. Screenshot 07 shows the saved HTML document.
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Okay. Let’s see how good WhoIs Analyzer Pro is, shall we? As we often mention, we subscribe to spam comments circulated around blogs and forums. Screenshot 08 shows a couple of spam comments sent to this blog. (Of course, you won’t see any of them here because all valid & invalid comments are moderated.) I highlighted one domain name. It’s truckonlineb.info. So let’s look up WhoIs information on this domain. Screenshot 09 shows that my request turned up nothing. The log at the bottom says that there are no records.
Does that mean truckonlineb.info doesn’t exist? It does. Screenshot 10 shows its website, which I was able to access just a couple of hours ago. The last request turned up nothing because I didn’t choose a right WhoIs server. There are many WhoIs servers. And one WhoIs server for .info domains is whois.afilias.net. So if I set the server to whois.afilias.net (See Screenshot 11.) and click on Go… Then I get results for truckonlineb.info. (See Screenshot 12.)
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All right. So we now know that WhoIs Analyzer Pro can do a good job if we choose a right WhoIs server. Let’s give them another assignment. Screenshot 13 shows another spam comment that was circulated by a cyberterrorist group. They often use volny.cz to host spam webpages. (Warning: You are advised not to go to any of the webpages shown in Screenshot 13. You will be redirected to the website of autopressonline.com where you are awaited by a possible computer virus. See Screenshot 14.) Anyway, the domain of volny.cz does exist, and a screenshot of its website is shown in Screenshot 15. And if I look up WhoIs information on volny.cz when the server is set to Automatic… (See Screenshot 16.)
Okay. WhoIs Analyzer Pro is good. But we can look up WhoIs information on volny.cz, using OS X’s Network Utility, right? All I have to do is click on the WhoIs tab and then choose whois.ripe.net because the top-level-domain suggests that it’s registered in Europe. (See Screenshot 17.) But Network Utility doesn’t allow you to look up WhoIs information on .info and .org domains. So that could be another reason why you want to use WhoIs Analyzer Pro over OS X’s Network Utility .
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By the way, why do we want to look up WhoIs information in the first place? The software developer says on its website that people use WhoIs Analyzer Pro to “research IP addresses, e-mail addresses, and URLs,” to “determine what company or individual is the customer-of-record for a domain, IP address, or URL,” to “locate contact information for adminstrators of domains or IP addresses” and … Okay. Suppose that I want to find out contact information on the website administrator of truckonlineb.info. Unfortunately, it has privacy protection. (See Screenshot 18.) It’s an anonymous domain. The domain registrant pays extra money to display somebody else’s information to hide its own identity. In fact, many spam domains are registered in this way. It is possible to unlock privacy protection. Sometimes, we succeed. Sometimes, we fail. I can tell you that WhoIs Analyzer Pro will not help you do that in any way.
Furthermore, what you can do with WhoIs Analyzer Pro is not so unique. You can find free PHP scripts to host a WhoIs look up website. In fact, we set up a domain search page with a free PHP script a few weeks ago. (See Screenshot 19.) If necessarily, we can just add more WhoIs servers to comply with other top-level domains beyond what we currently have.
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In addition, there are many online servers that you can use to look up WhoIs information. One is Whois.net (www.whois.net). Another one is Domain Tools (www.whois.sc). CompleteWhois is another. For example, you can look up WhoIs information on truckonlineb.info at Domain Tools with no problem. (See Screenshot 20.) And I can even save this search result with a web browser and open it whenever I need it. (See Screenshot 21-2.)
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Don’t expect WhoIs Analyzer Pro to assist you in finding out where cybercrime orgnizations operate. It’s not WhoIs Analyzer Pro’s fault. WhoIs is a loose form of registration because the law doesn’t require that the domain registrant provide accurate information. If information is inaccurate, then what? Look at Screenshot 18 again. That’s not the real address of the registrant. And look at Screenshot 23. nagashare.com is a spam domain. If you know some geography, you can tell that this registration is inaccurate. So if I I report WhoIs inaccuracy to the registrar or InterNIC, then? Nothing will happen. TUCOWS and GoDaddy are 2 worst domain registrars in this regard. We destroyed several dozen spam domains and scam websites during the 2nd half of 2007 alone. Destroying one is not that simple.
In summary, there is no unique feature supported by WhoIs Analyzer Pro. If you simply want to look up WhoIs information on a particular domain, you just need to find and bookmark free online WhoIs servers. Want to save search results? Again, use a web browser.
In addition, one needs some prior knowledge about how the domain system works when using WhoIs Analyzer Pro. For example, you may not get any results for your query if you don’t choose a right WhoIs server. And software developer’s online manual won’t help you in this respect.
WhoIs Analyzer Pro is a product of Vostrom Holdings, Inc.
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