Online scams date roughly as far back as the public use of Internet itself and they’re easier for scammers to pull off due to the edge of technical features that are not well understood by users, most of whom are laymen when it comes to the field of Web and Software use.
Domain Whois Checker:
However, not all is lost, there are good online tools that users can employ to protect their online assets and money from scams and phishing attacks specifically.
One of the most eminent tools for such purposes is the Domain Whois Checker usually available for free over the web. It’s used to access “Whois” database for the information of a specific domain to find out basic information about the website like its owner’s or administrator’s information, its last update time, its date of creation etc.
These Website Whois Checkers are hooked with the registries’ databases that are managed by International Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private non-profit company that is ultimately responsible for all the information.
Traditionally, command line interfaces were used for the purpose of Whois look up but these days, web tools usually by the name of Domain Whois Checker are employed for this purpose. They are available all over the web on online web tools’ sites like Prepostseo. They differ from command line interfaces in the sense that these web tools are easier to use do not require technical know-how.
Whois Lookup to defend against Phishing:
Whois pronounced “Who is” is an online system which stores the information related to the Web and the corresponding websites but its database can be accessed only through a Domain Whois Checker. Domain Whois Checker has crucial potential uses when it comes to avoiding phishing and online scamming.
Consider a typical scenario where you receive an online message from a website that may claim to give you free world tour tickets with forged e documents and fake credentials while asking for minimal payment in return.
You might get tempted and fall in the trap and lose your money. But knowing what a website Whois checker does, you could save yourself from the scam by just looking up the domain Whois and find out the information about the site that will give you points of details that would help you deduce whether the site is the real deal or trickster.
Almost all phishing websites are created a day or two before scams are executed from their domain’s platform. This is a key point that should be kept in mind before looking up the Whois of the site.
When you look up the domain Whois of the site, the information regarding the site that would be provided to you would include its administration’s information, the general location from where it is being operated, the date it was created, the date it was updated and other similar details.
Now these details are enough for you if you want to reason out whether the site is legit one or the one specifically created for phishing purposes.
So, if the message you received from the site asking you for a minimal payment in return for tickets for world tour, seems off given the obvious red flag of minimal payment for world travel, you could simply look up the site’s Whois and determine whether its fake or not.
If the site has been recently created then it’s another red flag that should deter you from making any deals with them. One thing should be understood however and it’s that the information contained within the look up depends largely on the registrar. The information that is deemed to be personal will not be displayed due to privacy rights of the citizen but the information that would be displayed would be just enough to deduce whether a website is intended for phishing attacks or not.
To give you a perspective, CNN reported a story about two gig photographers who got tricked into paying a scammer money for supposed tickets and photography permits to Indonesia. They later found out it was a phishing attack but it was too late for them to recover the money.
The Phishing Website that looted them of their money was a recently registered domain by the name of ‘wendimurdoch.com’ and one of the photographers had checked that as well yet chose to ignore the obvious and went on with it, losing their time and money.
Wu told CNN, “We overlooked the red flags. I did a Whois look up on the (wendimurdoch.com) domain, overlooked that it had been registered a couple of weeks previously,” said Henry Wu, one of the two photographers.
Present Whois Policy updates:
Evaluating the changing and evolving complexity of the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has adapted by modifying the Whois service requirement agreements with registrars and registries over the years.
These agreements establish the basic framework of how Whois would be operated. ICANN have implemented several policies to improve the Whois service for present users. For this purpose, the ICANN has adopted Measures to detect malicious behaviour over the Internet as well as to help start-ups, established businesses and other regular users and firms in fighting online scams and assistance in war against abuse of information technology.
On the other hand, it has adopted measures to regulate the registration process for domain names to shut any possible loop holes that could be exploited due to unregulated registration of domain names.
Concluding Remarks:
The crux of this article was to explain in depth, what phishing is essentially, how to identify such attacks and to arm the readers with knowledge of tools that can be employed to protect against these attacks.
The Internet is a vast virtual space with trouble spots of its own and the best way to sail through is to be careful, observant and especially, aware of how to do and what to do in scenarios that involve potential scams.
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