[ale] [OT] Is it possible to find historical whois info?

[James Baldwin]

On 13 Feb 2005, at 23:53, Christopher Bergeron wrote:

> I'm looking for information on a domain that just recently changed (on 
> Saturday).  I was wondering if there was a way to find out what the 
> previous registrant information was before the update.
>
> Does anyone know how/where I could find this out?

This comes up fairly regularly on other network operator centric 
mailings lists. After grepping quickly through a few years of logs, the 
general consensus is that there is no public archive of whois data 
available. There do exist private archives that are referenced 
occasionally in disputes, but these more likely amount to registrar 
tape backups rather than a formal whois history. The last thread I 
found on this was in '03 so... there might be one now. If you come 
across one I'd be very delighted to know about it.

This, of course, leaves you with petitioning the registrar for the 
information. Since it was public before the update they may release it 
to you, however they could decide to be difficult and require subpoena.
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