Whois is an online directory that contains personal information about Internet domain name holders. It was designed in the early 1980s as a network accessible database of hosts and IP addresses. But today all the domain name owners must update the Whois directory with their information – personal as well as detail domain information.

Whois supports all protocol extensions (RIPE, 6bone, CRSNIC) with the familiar RIPE command line interface and Ipv6 support. Whois automatically queries the right registry for all domains and most netblocks.

When an Internet domain is registered, the details of the owners are entered into the Whois database and published by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The procedure was designed to ensure that if technical problems or incompatibilities arise, it becomes easy to contact the owner of the domain.

Whois database has now grown beyond all expectations and is open for exploitation and privacy groups argue.

The Whois database was originally intended to allow network administrators to find and fix problems to maintain the stability of the Internet. However, now, anyone with Internet access can access Whois data.