[dns-operations] Safe public whois site/tool?

[m3047]

DomainTools is probably ok. Or, you could do lookups against the registry. 
Or if you don't want to attract attention, get a passive DNS query quota 
from somewhere with good coverage. Ideally you want NXDOMAIN too, that way 
you get to see .belkin along with .cisco.

--

Fred Morris

On Tue, 5 Mar 2019, Doug Barton wrote:
> 
> Folks,
>
> I know that there are a lot of public whois sites, and purveyors of domain 
> name tools, but I also know that a non-trivial number of them are scams, to 
> the extent that some of them will even register good names out from under you 
> if you use them.
>
> Is there a safe place for me to send folks to look up domain names? I'm 
> particularly interested in a way for folks to determine if a name is 
> registered, or available.
>
> https://whois.domaintools.com looks promising, but I don't have direct 
> experience with domaintools.com.
>
> Doug