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Is there a canonical place that stores DNS registration information? For example for a domain that has changed hands a few times, can I see a listing of the owner information* over time and when the transfers took place?

*whether it's proxied or not

Note: I'm interested in any domain, whether it's an international TLD or a country coded site.

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    Netcraft has (something) like this , but I'm not so sure that it works on all domains, especially domains that contain multibyte characters. Good question :)
    – Tim Post
    Aug 7, 2010 at 16:32
  • Can we ask what do you need this for?
    – Marco Demaio
    Aug 15, 2010 at 2:03
  • Sometimes I want to see the history of a domain, whether it's changed hands, how much the hosting has changed.
    – artlung
    Aug 18, 2010 at 20:57

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http://whois.sc is the closest thing to your requirements that I'm aware of, although they want you to pay if you want access to historical information.

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    Do they adequately handle non-ascii domains?
    – Tim Post
    Aug 7, 2010 at 18:01
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    Quote: "Upgrade your membership to view the historical whois records!"
    – fwaechter
    Aug 7, 2010 at 19:21
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    Yeah, that's the only site I know of that does anything like this. It's a habit for me to do lookups like whois.sc/example.com which redirects to whois.domaintools.com/example.com ... I can't even remember how I learned about the site, but it's the only one I know of. Love the question about non-ascii domains. What would be an example of one? Try it out with the pattern http://whois.sc/*DOMAIN* and see if it works!
    – artlung
    Aug 7, 2010 at 19:52
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    @Tim - non-ascii domains always have an ASCII equivalent - see serverfault.com/questions/142793/…
    – Mark Henderson
    Aug 10, 2010 at 23:20
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Have you tried http://dnshistory.org? I've tested it with my private - not listed on google - domain and the site returns complete history of NS, MX, A, etc. changes. I don't know how many domains/nameservers the site has "crawled". But i was surprised that the site has found my private domain.

Maybe that fits your needs?

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  • Seems not to have ownership information, but it does have the records you indicated. Also interesting for showing subdomains for domains. Though I checked a few of my sites and it was ignorant of several public subdomains I have. Spotty, but potentially useful down the line. Thanks!
    – artlung
    Aug 10, 2010 at 22:42
  • Look in the SOA record for the RName: eg: hostmaster.genotec.ch -> [email protected]
    – fwaechter
    Aug 11, 2010 at 5:50
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While it may be possible to get that information for some domains it certainly won't be possible for any and all registrations. Depending on the domain, that information may not be available due to local privacy laws. Also, domains may also be registered through a proxy agent, so the real ownership may never even have been listed.

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  • I just want to see a history of the public DNS record, The question is not about wanting to get "unmasked" ownership information.
    – artlung
    Aug 17, 2010 at 11:51

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