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About This Site
This website was inspired by the recommendations from the WHOIS Review Team formed under ICANN’s Affirmation of Commitments, that encouraged ICANN to undertake a series of improvements to its current implementation of WHOIS services. One of these recommendations called upon ICANN to raise awareness of the service, and to improve its user-friendliness.
Phase I - Informational Website (Complete)
Phase I of the website is dedicated to providing comprehensive information to consumers of WHOIS related to various aspects of WHOIS. Subsequent phases will provide additional functionality to simplify the consumer experience, and to report upon improvements to the quality of WHOIS data.
Phase I includes the following content:
- About WHOIS: What is WHOIS, historical context, and technical articles
- Policies: Current policies and obligations for Registrants, Registries and Registrars
- Get Involved: Mechanisms and background on how to get involved with groups that work on WHOIS policy development
- Improving WHOIS: Features to file complaints to ICANN on inaccuracies and services unavailable, as well as background on ICANN processes for handling complaints
- Knowledge Center: Centralized repository of WHOIS related content and Q/As
Phase II - Global WHOIS Lookup (In Progress)
- Lookup: Global WHOIS lookup capability for all contracted gTLDs with ICANN
- Using WHOIS: User-guides for WHOIS lookup
Phase III - Statistical Analysis (In Progress)
- Improving WHOIS: Statistical Analysis of WHOIS Accuracy