WHOIS is a protocol which makes it an easy task to see the information a particular domain has been registered with through a command line or using special web-based lookup sites. This information includes the names, address and email address of the owner, admin, tech and billing persons plus the registrar company the domain address has been acquired through, the creation and expiration dates. Apart from several country-code TLDs that have specific limitations, the WHOIS information of any domain name can be edited freely at any time, which is quite important since in accordance with the policies of the top-level Internet Corporation, ICANN, all details must be current and legitimate all of the time. Failure to comply with these policies could lead to losing the ownership of a domain address and in many cases a domain address could even be erased from the Domain Name System and released for free registration.
