Terminal Tip: using whois

Whois or "Who is," is a way to query for contact information (or domain name ownership information) about the person or company in control of a site. If you want to know who runs a website, you don't have to look any further than your Mac and opening a Terminal window.

All you have to do is open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/) and type in "whois" and space followed by a URL. For instance, the following command would give you the whois information for tuaw.com: whois tuaw.com.

You can do this for almost any website; however, some domain names use some form of a hiding service from their registrar that allows them to hide their contact information. Be forewarned that you shouldn't use information like this to stalk people!

Please note that if you have Terminal-itis, or are scared of the Terminal, you can use Apple's Network Utility in Mac OS X to do a whois query. Just open Network Utility.app (in the /Applications/Utilities/) and click the "whois" tab. From there you can enter a URL and do a query, all within a pretty "Aqua-licious" user interface.