What WHOIS reveals about a domain owner
3 min read
When a domain is registered, the registrar passes the owner’s contacts to the TLD registry: name, email, phone and address. ICANN rules require it: without these fields a domain cannot be registered. The question is who sees that data later.
What is open to everyone
The public part of WHOIS is available to anyone: the registrar, the registration date, the expiry date, the nameservers and the domain statuses. You can check any name with our WHOIS lookup: enter a domain and see what the registry returns.
Most registries no longer show the owner’s name and email. But “not shown” does not mean “not stored”.
What stays with the registrar
Data hidden in WHOIS does not go anywhere. It sits with the registrar and in the registry, and it can be disclosed on request. Paid “WHOIS protection” at regular registrars changes only what the public gets to see: the registrar itself still holds all of your real contact details.
There is a second consequence. Domains registered to the same contacts are linked to each other at the registrar: knowing one makes it easy to find the rest.
How it works at Lumi
We do not ask for your data at all: no passport, no phone, no address. Separate contacts are generated for every registration, and they are what goes to the registry. There is nothing to disclose: your name, email and phone are neither in WHOIS nor with the registrar.
Every domain has its own contacts and its own Cloudflare account, so two of your domains have nothing in common in the registry. The ICANN email that verifies the owner’s address is handled on our side, and nothing is needed from you.
There is more about what goes to the registry on the private WHOIS page.