Finding out who owns a website without any public contact information

Today when was on Facebook I noticed a particular advertisement on the right-hand side.  Wondering who this was that was advertising, if I know them and curious about the Domain Name as I always am I clicked on the link.

The resulting page does not display any contact information of any sort.  The contact link only opens up your e-mail client.

So how do you find out who owns this domain name and who you will actually be contacting if you decided to submit your information?

So now that we’ve come across the site .  How do find out who they actually are?

Usually you can do what is called a WHOIS search.  This is in the simplest terms determining the owner of the domain.  In this case I went to a domain registrar site such as GoDaddy.com.  Find the WHOIS Lookup on the Domain Registrar’s site.  Enter the Domain Name that you are interested in finding out more information about.

As long as the Domain has not been registered Privately then you will see most of the information you want.  In this case the domain was not registered privately and we can clearly see who the domain owner is and there is even an email address and phone number for contact if you wished.

This can be useful in a number of ways including why they would not want to disclose this information on the website publically.  This is most likely a lead generation tool for Mr.Plowman.

Here in Alberta if you are acting on behalf of someone when they are buying or selling a home you must be licensed by the Real Estate Council of Alberta (there are some exemptions for the Government, Lawyers but in general you cannot act to for someone else unless you are licensed).  As a professional within the real estate industry there is also the requirement to disclose publicly the brokerage information and the name of the individual agent.

I know the people that I deal with don’t like to deal with unknowns and not putting your information online publicly when you are asking for their contact information is pretty bad.  Just my two cents today!!!