.: Binky: whois

[Help: Whois]

WHOIS [server] <host.name>

To find out who owns a particular domain, you query what is known as a 'whois' server. This command attempts to find out which server to query for information, and then asks the whois server about the information. You can also specify the server to query.

An example that will figure out who owns the yahoo.com domain:

WHOIS yahoo.com

Binky uses a modified whois module that is fairly intelligent. Since InterNIC is passing along domains to other whois servers, Binky will forward your whois request to the correct server for nearly any domain you can think of. You should never be forced to specify the whois server, unless it is for
a very specialized task.

A server of whois.abuse.net will give you the administrative email addresses for any server that it knows. So, if you have some spam and you want to know who you are supposed to email your complaints to, use the whois.abuse.net server to get an email address or two of administrators for that system.