Check whois with domain name & IP lookup tools

In the day-to-day high-tech world, there must be rarely any person who is not aware of the term "Domain". If you are a domain registrant, this is a must-follow blog. A domain user must know the importance of hiding domain registrant information and that is exactly so what this article is all about.

Whether you are a beginner or a pro user, you will surely find something worthwhile in this blog.

I have done a detailed review of this so let me explain you. But, before that let's understand what is a domain name and its importance.

A domain name

A domain name is the address of your website. A name that comes after the "@" in an e-mail address and after the "www" in a web address. It is supposed to be unique and should not be shared between dissimilar sites. Some examples are "gmail.com", and "google.com".

Importance of a domain name

A domain name is a vital part of any organisation or any product. It helps online users to evoke websites and function as a symbol of an organisation or any individual. A domain name is the most cherished credit of any business.

Domain name registrant and domain name registrant information

Domain registrant information is the information held by the domain name owner. A domain name registrant is a person or an organisation which registers a domain name for their business. During registration of a domain, registration agreement is signed between registrant (you) and the registrar (domain name provider).

Domain name registrants have certain rights and responsibilities. A domain name registration owner has the right to receive information from their registrar regarding the process of registering, managing, transferring, renewing, and restoring domain name registration.

The domain name registrant information includes email, phone number, name and address. If any problem arises, this information is very essential for your domain name availability. But, as far as security is concerned, this information should be private and not publically displayed. Users can use a domain privacy service to not make it available publicly.

Importance of Domain privacy protection

ICANN (and other registries not under ICANN's control) requires anybody who owns a website, whether it be for a business, organisation, or personal use, to give correct and complete contact information for their domain. This material must by law be made available to the public.

Anyone can access the publicly available Whois data by entering registered domain names into any free-to-use Whois search engine. They will therefore obtain your personal information if it is not safeguarded.

Your personal information is all out there, available to spammers and unsolicited marketing and sales calls, and it could even make it possible for your domain to be taken over.

Enter domain privacy protection, a service that masks your contact information by using email addresses that are generated at random and the privacy service's contact information in place of your actual contact information.

All of your data is laid out, left extensively open for unsolicited marketing and sales contacts, and spam, and may allow your domain to get hijacked.

Enter domain privacy protection, a service that keeps your contact information anonymous by replacing real contact information with that of the privacy service and randomly generated email addresses.

Data breaches exposed the personal information of more than 155.8 million Americans alone in 2020. It was also found that 86 per cent of data breaches were financially motivated.

Working process of Domain Privacy Protection

To get a domain name, you have to register it with the "WHOIS" directory first. Your correct and complete information is required by the ICANN, such as email address, phone number, name and address of the proprietor of the domain name.

Together with the registration and expiration dates, IP addresses, and domain registrar, this information must be made accessible to the general public in the WHOIS database. There is no method around registering a domain with misleading data; only true information is permitted. Your email address, mailing address, and phone number are just a few of the details that are checked. Furthermore, as a business owner, authenticity is essential to gaining the respect and trust of your audience.

It is legal to use this information to research a domain name before registering your own or for other commercial objectives. Making these facts known, however, opens the door to malicious intent.

Website proprietors and managers can hide their delicate (personal information) data from the public directory by using a domain privacy protection service. Domain privacy protection services show a forwarding email address that changes often in place of their email addresses and contact details, keeping your identity constantly shielded.

This way domain privacy policy ensures that your sensitive information is completely hidden on the internet, reducing the possibility of cyberattacks against your website. It is for this reason that domain privacy services are necessary.

Hope you liked our article!

Whenever you enter a domain name such as "eukhost.com" or "microsoft.com", DNS discovers the exact IP address and gives you the result. DNS acts as the phonebook of the Internet, it makes the internet work and links the web browsers with the websites.

The purpose of this article is to answer all the questions you have related to reverse DNS lookup, what exactly it is, how it works and how to perform a reverse DNS lookup.

What is DNS lookup?

In DNS lookup, the DNS record is returned from the DNS server. The DNS translates domain names into IP addresses by performing a DNS lookup. The way you search for a number in a phonebook is exactly what happens with the DNS lookup and hence it is called a "DNS lookup".

Important note - Preceding further, let me remind you that every single device has an IP address and this IP address is used to navigate to the destination page. However, you don't type your IP address.

What are the kinds of DNS lookups?

There are two kinds of DNS lookup:

a) Forward DNS lookup- In forward lookup, domain names are translated to the IP address of a particular site name(Hostname). As we are humans and not computers, we can remember words easily as compared to numbers. It is not possible to remember the IP addresses of different sites.

b) Reverse DNS lookup- In reverse lookup (RDNS lookup), an IP address is translated to its domain name.

Now, let us discover reverse DNS lookup in more detail:

1. A reverse lookup is a DNS request for the domain name related to a given. An RDNS search involves searching domain name registries and registrars' databases. The reverse DNS database of the Internet is rooted in the top-level domain .arpa.
2. Although reverse DNS lookups are recommended by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) guidelines, they are not a strict requirement because reverse lookups are not necessary for the internet to operate normally. Reverse DNS lookups are not generally used as a result.
3. Reverse DNS records are kept in a specific zone as pointer (PTR) records.
4. A pointer (PTR) record is requested from DNS servers during a reverse DNS lookup. An IPv4 or IPv6 address is mapped to the host's canonical name via a PTR record. The lookup fails if there is no PTR record on the server.

How does reverse DNS lookup benefit you?

1. Analytics. Instead of simply listing logs of IP addresses, reverse DNS helps give data that can be analysed by humans.
2. The only system in the world that can assist you in browsing the internet is DNS. Maintaining DNS Servers has grown more crucial since the internet has become a fundamental component of society. The internet would not exist without them.
3. An IP address can be set using a reverse IP lookup, which links a domain name to the actual IP address of the computer hosting the domain. The answers aid in classifying server susceptibilities and the virtual hosts that a web server serves.
4. Effortless network interaction. The majority of enterprise management systems, r-commands, SMTP servers, and network backup solutions won't cause you any trouble if you use reverse DNS. One of the basics for using several Internet protocols is RDNS.

How to manually perform reverse DNS lookups?

In this section, we will find out how to manually perform the reverse DNS lookup.

1. Reverse DNS lookup on Windows: You can utilise "nslookup" command to check DNS. Open the CMD (command prompt) and run the below command:
   nslookup < IP Address >Replace < IP Address > Your IP address should be resolved.In the image below, an IP address of 8.8.8.8 is reverse DNS looked up.
   
2. Reverse DNS lookup on Linux: Open the command prompt and enter the following command. dig -x IP_ADDRESS
   
   With the dig command, replace IP_ADDRESS with the IP address you wish to resolve, and you'll see the results of the DNS reverse lookup.
   
3. Reverse DNS lookup on Mac: You can run the below command if you are using macOS. Replace IP_ADDRESS with the IP address you wish to resolve.  dig -x IP_ADDRESS A reverse lookup for domain name servers will be performed and the results will be displayed.Today you learned what reverse DNS is and how you can use it on Windows, Linux, and Mac.We hope you liked reading our article on reverse DNS, its types and how it works. However, we'd love to get your feedback on what works and what doesn't. Have we forgotten anything? Would you like to see any further information on reverse DNS lookup?

If I say in today's world almost everyone is using a domain name then it is not wrong? We all are using domain names to search websites. As it is difficult for a human being to remember a string of numbers, in contrast, we can remember the names easily and hence domain names are an important factor in the world of the internet.

This domain name is then converted into an IP address and your desired page is displayed on the screen. This process is known as DNS(Domain name system).

The fundamental units of a domain naming system are DNS records. They provide you with the option of pointing a domain to a website, an email address, or another online resource.

The Domain name system records-DNS records are the records you hoard in the domain's database(servers). These records specify how and what can be accessed from your website as well as how it is hosted. They instruct the internet on how to access and use your website.

You will learn about DNS records in this guide, including what they are, their importance and their types.

So let's explore the guide!

What is a DNS record?

1. DNS records are useful in pointing a domain to a website, different pages on the internet, or an email address.
2. It is a database record that is used to record(map) a URL to an IP address.
3. The DNS records are stored in the DNS databases and allow the users to connect to their destined page on the internet.
4. When you enter the URL in your browser, this URL is passed to the DNS servers and then directed to the particular Web server.
5. The requested website specified in the URL is subsequently served by this Web server, or the user is instead forwarded to an email server that handles incoming mail.
6. DNS records are arranged into zones. Zones, which resemble one or more domains under your control, are how DNS entries are ordered. If you hold the domain names test.com and exam.com, each will have its own unique DNS record set.

Importance of DNS record

1. Corporations can redirect DNS requests or block unwanted or unknown domains. To avoid users visiting unsafe sites.
2. You can keep track of security issues with DNS records.
3. If the site is hacked it allows users to stay away from it.
4. The DNS security layer provides additional protection between users and the internet.
5. Using a DNS record, multiple websites seamlessly can be accessed from the same web server.

Now, let us find its types.

Some of the important types are discussed below:

1. CNAME (Canonical) Record
   

   A Canonical Name or CNAME record is a type of DNS record that records an alias name to a true or canonical domain name. For instance, if you have a website on your main domain, you can set up an alias using a CNAME record so that when someone types your main domain with a /kb, they are directed to kb.yourdomain.com rather than the parent domain.

   CNAME record is also used for redirection. Users have the option to point their domain to the server by setting up a CNAME record.

2. A record-
   The most classic type of DNS record is the A record. An A record links a domain name to the actual IP address of the machine that hosts it. The A record directs internet traffic to the machine that manages the DNS settings for your domain. Multiple A records can be set up for a single domain name, and an A record's value is always an IP address. The most common use of a record is for IP address lookups. An A record is used by a web browser to load a webpage using the domain name. As a result, even if we don’t know a website's IP address, we can still access it via the Internet.

   Spam mails are blocked using the A record.

   The IP address of your domain is an A record. The domain name is resolved to the host server using it. As a result, each time someone visits the domain, the browser can retrieve the database and show the content of your website.

   It includes the subdomain value, the domain, the target IP address, the record type, and the TTL (Time to Live) value, which indicates how long changes to the record should take effect.

3. Communal TXT records:
   1. DMARC Record-
      One of the greatest ways to safeguard your brand from spoofing is to use the DMARC email authentication standard. You may stop attackers from sending phishing emails to your employees and prospective clients on your behalf by adding a DMARC TXT record to your domain's DNS settings.You can instruct mail recipients on what to do with messages that fail authentication using DMARC.

      Business email compromise, phishing scams, and other cyber dangers including email security and domain abuse can be reduced by enforcing a DMARC policy.

   2. SPF TXT Record-
      SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, is the acronym. It serves as a safeguard against the improper use of your domain name in emails.It is a text file that you can generate to stop your emails from being flagged as spam, which might occur if someone sends emails using your domain name without your permission. You'll need administrator access to your domain's DNS settings to put up an SPF TXT record.

      An SPF record-generating tool can be used to generate this record.

   3. DKIM Record-
      DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) checks that an email message's contents weren't changed during transmission to help assure its authenticity. It works well in cases involving mail forwarding and email interception.
   4. SOA Record
      All domains utilise the Start of Authority records to identify their principal name server, which serves as the authoritative repository for zone-related data and is in charge of managing the domain as a whole. This provides the email address and the way to get in touch with the webmaster.
   5. SRV Record
      To provide a certain service in the network, a server's hostname and location are specified in a service record.
4. Nameserver (NS) Record
   A domain name's nameservers are listed in this record. It must be correctly configured before adding any additional entries for that domain because it is added to the zone file when you add a new domain to your account. They are a crucial component of almost any domain name system (DNS) configuration since they inform other users of the internet of the nameservers you are using to resolve domain names. NS records serve as an authoritative source for DNS information, assisting users in navigating the web.

   The following is an example of a nameserver (NS) record:

   test.com NS ns1.test.com

5. Mail exchange (MX) Record-
   The mail servers in charge of receiving emails sent to a domain name are listed in an MX record. This type of record, which points to an A record or AAAA record that identifies one or more IP addresses where your mail server(s) are hosted, is necessary if you want to receive email through your domain.An illustration of a mail exchange (MX) record for Google's mail servers is as follows:

   IN MX 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
   

6. AAAA Record-
   The AAAA records of the IPv6 protocol are used to assign IPv6 addresses to hosts on the Internet. You can use them to assign IPv6 addresses to computers or devices or to assign IPv6 addresses to hostnames.Network administrators can use them for assigning custom IPv6 addresses to their devices without having to deal with long strings of numbers like 2001:db8:0:0:0:16d9:a5b3 or 2001:db8:8c3f::17e9/128.

   AAAA records are similar to A records, except that they store IPv6 addresses rather than IPv4. IPv6-enabled websites also need it.

   AAAA records point to IPv6 addresses like-

   2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.
   

7. TXT Record
   It is a kind of DNS record that allows you to comprise more text-based domain-related data. Usually, they are applied to email security and authentication procedures.The TXT record serves as a guide for the receiving server on how to verify the source data from the mail servers. The SPF TXT record is the main tool used by mail servers to verify an email's validity, especially for SPF authentication.

   Example of a TXT record ("v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com all")