WHOIS is not an acronym but a phrase that refers to a series of information that identifies, “who is” the owner of a domain name or IP address. When individuals, governments, and businesses register a domain name with ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), they must provide the domain name as well as contact information. Such contact information includes the registrant’s name, address, phone number, email, technical contacts, and administrative contacts.

By law, some of the WHOIS information must be available for public access. Accordingly, ICANN created a directory to ascertain the identity of domain name registrants.

For those uncomfortable with their personal WHOIS information being listed, wehost provides an alternative which shows private registration information for your domain. When using this service wehost will hide your personal information and list our Whois Privacy service in the public record.