How To Find Someone Who Owns a Website

So you're looking at a website that is offering a service and it appears to be too good to be true. There is no clue of how to find someone with a real name and address, who is involved with the business.

There are several other things worrying you already, such as:

• No company name, address or landline phone number
  
• No privacy policy or terms and conditions

So, how to see who owns the website?

You need to do a Who-Is search. Now, I'm not going to promote one site over another by linking, but usually every site that sells domain names also provides a free who-is look-up.

Just go to your search engine, and type in "Who-Is"

When you have chosen a service, you will find there are two fields needing information.

• In the first you type in the domain name, which is the bit after www.
• In the second you select the rest of the domain address (.com, .gov etc), usually from a drop-down list.

If the domain is owned by a responsible company, then you will find their details.

If its owned by an individual, you may find their name and address, or you may find that they have registered as ' a private individual' and declined to give any real contact information. To do that they have to declare that the website is personal use only - which instantly tells you something about their attitude towards legalities!

If the Who-Is process fails for you, then usually the next step is to instigate a search for their IP address, and details of how to find someone using that method are available here.