Whois It?
(Paul Watkins 02/17/09)

Do you ever get email from some person/place who you aren't too sure about? Ever wonder who legitimate a particular website is? Here's a simple way to get some info that may give you an idea whether a website or email is legit?

Google the word "whois". (no space, it's all one word.) Here's the page with the top three results I came up with.

So click on one of the links (I'm going to use the first one) and just type in the name of the website without the "www" or "http://", etc. or the part of the email address to the right of the "@" sign. (e.g. my website is www.gnulife.com so I would type in gnulife.com).

The results will give you something like the info below, only more.

There will be quite a bit more information than what I've pasted above, but what you want to look for is the "registrant" and "admin" info. A lot of people will register their domain name anonymously because they don't want you to know who they are. As far as I'm concerned, if they don't want me to know who's really behind their website/domain, I don't want to have anything to do with them. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're up to no good, but it's a good bet that if they are up to no good, they won't let you know who they are.

Exodus 3:13,14 Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

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