As you likely heard, on Monday April 7th, news broke on the Heartbleed bug vulnerability in the OpenSSL cryptographic library and the risk to users' accounts. This has widespread implications as OpenSSL is used by roughly two-thirds of all websites on the Internet and this vulnerability could expose a user's login and password to hackers. […]...

Anyone who uses our products knows that we have a ton of data across domain names, Whois records, IP addresses, name servers, mail servers, registrars, hosts and more–in fact, over 15 billion Internet data points. Recently we?ve had some fun thinking about how we can show new and interesting insight into this data through data […]

This week, DomainTools will redirect whois.sc traffic to whois.domaintools.com. Many of you will remember that DomainTools originally started as ?Whois.sc?. And that URL has maintained its sole purpose of serving the best Whois records in the industry. But as we continue to build and refine our business maintaining multiple sites and brands has cre...

On behalf of the DomainTools team that worked super hard to get our third major release of 2014 out the door, I?m very pleased to announce the launch of our completely rebuilt Domain Search product. Domain Search allows you to search through all domains currently registered in DNS that DomainTools knows about (which is pretty […]

In Part 1 of this topic, we saw how the so-called ?Contact Path??branches of investigation that stem from the registrant contact information in a Whois record?can often lead to the identity of a person or organization of interest. But sometimes the contact information is either fully privacy-guarded or is false data that leads to dead […]

If economics and markets reflect what?s important to people–and, almost by definition, they do–then the practically eternal markets for games, puzzles, and reading material testify to deep human passions for solving problems and gaining knowledge. The very nature of a puzzle is that, at first, it looks like there?s not enough informatio...

When I reflect on the state of product innovation at DomainTools the sports training saying ?Bigger. Faster. Stronger.? seems to fit quite well. In 2013, the DomainTools team spent a lot of time and energy building a foundation for scale and product innovation; updating the infrastructure, building data systems and improving the code. In short, [&#...

Year-end is a fantastic time for personal and professional reflection, something I finally made due time for this December. As we kick off 2014, I?m filled with two emotions: gratitude, and excitement. Let?s start with gratitude. DomainTools hired eleven outstanding new employees in 2013 (hint: oldest employees at the top, newest at the bottom). As...

Reading the recently released Cisco Annual Security Report, I paused on page 50 where the author talks about bitsquatting. ?It seems this topic continues to ruminate in cybersecurity circles, recalling this paper from Black Hat in 2011. ?So we spent a few hours yesterday poking around to examine some registration patterns related to bitsquatting. A...

Regular users of DomainTools will have noticed quite a lot of updates in the last couple of months. Our product philosophy at DomainTools is to release new products, fixes and updates as soon as they are ready, instead of holding them back for a big grouped release. We believe this provides our users more value, […]

Answer: a (legal in the UK) betting site apparently owned by BSkyB that is temporarily suspended as a result of ICANN?s new Registrar agreement. As has been widely discussed in industry circles this morning, and reported on a number of other blogs, this is the first site of note that has fallen victim to the […]

Remember when there used to be a debate about whether or when full-on cyberwarfare would be upon us? It?s safe to say that the debate is over, or at the very least that it has morphed into a more nuanced debate about what to do about it. Traditional security measures (firewalls, anti-malware scanning and reputation, […]

When we rolled out our new website home page last November, we promised a transformation of our design and User Experience (UX) across our entire site.? And we?re not settling for superficial design changes, we are rethinking our UX to align with our users? experiences and what they are trying to accomplish with our products. […]

2014 is going to be a big year for the domain industry, driven in large part by the advent of new gTLDs. ?My friend Richard Lau is ringing in the new year by putting on the largest domain name conference in recent memory, this week in Las Vegas. DomainTools will be there and I encourage […]

We are very excited to present a new look and feel for DomainTools? website! ?This is the first of many changes to design, usability and architecture to come. ?We have long wanted to update the look and usability of our website, but have prioritized delivering the best data, scalable and reliable infrastructure and innovative products […]

Among the (very) long list of projects that we?d love to work on here at DomainTools is to extend the DailyChanges data beyond the 6 core gTLDs that it currently supports.

Andrew Alleman of Domain Name Wire earlier this week put up a detailed post about Registry Lock stats, using data from DomainTools from the period before the Syrian Electronic Army hack of MelbourneIT. We thought it would be interesting to see if any of the top sites that previously did NOT have Registry Lock, had […]

Proving once again that all of us should not quit our day jobs, the DomainTools crew successfully 'hacked' up the local mini golf course yesterday, ironically, at the end of another successful Hack Days event.

As has been widely publicized, yesterday, August 27, ?a group claiming to be the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hacked into the MelbourneIT registrar and gained access to the registrar account of some very important clients including Twitter and the New York Times. ?DomainTools got some free publicity out of that as the initial announcement?by the [&...

As many of our more astute users have noticed, we recently rolled out certain changes to our screenshots functionality. These changes update not only the screenshot for a domain that is viewed on our Whois page, or the collection of thumbnails that appear in a DomainReport, it also directly ties into those screenshots displayed on Screenshots.com.

Most people still think antivirus software, email filters, and automatic updates provide sufficient protection against online evil, and if something does get through, the worse that could happen is a brief loss of productivity while they clean up their machine from a bunch of popups. For them, it?s all about preventing an attack, and they belie...

If you follow any court decisions on domain name disputes, you probably know that a significant amount of domain name typosquatting still exists despite attempts to quell it. Typosquatting occurs when someone registers domain names that are mistakenly close in spelling to an established brand name/domain name. ?Typosquatters receive traffic when so...

When I was asked to write a blog for DomainTools, I was perplexed as to what insight I could offer readers of the blog. I figured I would lean on what I know. I am relatively new to the company. But, I am far from new to the role of client services. I have worked in, or managed, client services with companies such as Amazon.com, Flying Lab Soft...

That?s a question we get asked a lot. ?So I thought I would blog some updated stats. In order to answer that question, you have to know what ?all the domains? actually is, in other words, you need the denominator for a coverage ratio. ?In a world where most ccTLD Registries do not publish zone

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of World IPv6 Launch Day. This was a day when many major websites & service providers enabled IPv6 support permanently. For those folks not familiar with IPv6, it?s the next generation Internet addressing scheme set to replace our current IPv4. With the incredible growth of internet connected devices ...

This spring contained, as usual, the spring ?conference season?. And, DomainTools attended a variety of them. The back-to-back-to-back conferences we exhibited at were FS-ISAC, IACC and INTA. Each of the three conferences had sessions covering the pervasiveness of cybercrime generally, but each also focused in on areas specifically pertaining t...

For those of you not familiar with the term ?hack day?, it?s commonly used among technical professionals when referring to free time at work to focus on something that is outside of your daily, required workload. I can only imagine that the phrase was coined because it started with a bunch of programmers sitting in front of their computers, hacking...

The launch of .PW has received a great deal of attention because it can indicate the kind of reception new gTLDs may receive.? The .PW registry operators were delighted to reach 50,000 domain registrations within only 3 weeks of general availability.? With their goal for the year of 100,000 registrations, they appear to be well

This May is a busy month for DomainTools! We're exhibiting at three conferences this month (back to back) that are specific to the financial services, anti-counterfeiting and trademark audiences. DomainTools will be talking to conference attendees about their current business needs and how our products and latest innovations can be used as critica...

All to often the Support Team here at DomainTools receives disconcerting stories from registrants who have no control over their domain names or websites. What is entirely surprising is how many registrants shift control of their business? domain and/or website to outside resources without building a solid understanding as to how to manage their ...

As a marketer, I rely on a wide range of tools every day to track campaign ROI and gain insight into the health and impact of the various DomainTools marketing programs I run. Some of the tools I use (such as Twitter, ExactTarget, Facebook, and LinkedIn) provide their own metrics based on number of visits, specific content impressions/shares, over...

We use different forms of rate limiting throughout DomainTools. Common use cases are detecting abusive actors trying to scrape our data and limiting requests to external services to avoid placing any undue load. I have seen and used many different algorithms for rate limiting requests but none of which met the requirements for a project

Dietmar Stefitz and Jodi Chamberlain are once again putting on their Domaining Spain conference April 25-27 in Valencia, Spain. DomainTools is proud to sponsor this Europe-focused domain event as we expand many of our products in 2013 to cover ccTLDs and of course all new gTLDs. Our very own James Morfopoulos will be speaking at the event so be sur...

For DomainTools, the game changers have been large memory systems,?solid state drives, and virtual systems. 10 years ago, it was very very expensive to buy a server with more?than 4 gigabytes of memory. ?With improvements in manufacturing and?memory technology, it's easy to buy systems with 256 gigabytes or more?of memory. ?DomainTools uses a numb...

How I Found Out About DomainTools And Won a Great Client I first came across DomainTools through a close colleague of mine who owns Australia's domain name trading forum, DNTrade.com.au. He loaded up DomainTools.com on his PC in the office one night. I was firstly struck by how fast it ran and the depth of the data it returned. I signed up for a ...

This past weekend, the DomainTools team ventured to The Great White North (Whistler, B.C. CA) for our annual winter retreat. Whistler is a perfect destination for a team like ours, as it provides a wide variety of recreational activities. Once everyone arrived at Whistler and settled in after the long bus ride, we kicked things

Most people reading this blog are probably aware that Microsoft is force-converting Hotmail users to its new Outlook email service this week. And as many of you know, 'Hotmail' is one of the most cybersquatted brands of all-time. With Outlook being an emerging global brand, it provides a good use case for our newly expanded Brand Monitoring service...

DomainTools is well-known for Whois data: whois lookup, whois history, and reverse whois reports. But we also have a lot of other cool products that savvy clients utilize all the time. Many of those products deal with domain names and DNS data, rather than strictly whois data. Brand Monitor is a perfect example. This product reviews new domain...

Big changes are ahead on the internet. ICANN will be implementing its new gTLD program this Spring (2013) and we can expect to see hundreds of new domain name extensions such as .love, .donuts, .art, .law, .fashion, .games, .tech, .pizza. ninja?well? you get the idea. There will be new gTLDs for almost any profession, community, service or indust...

Transformative Digital Products I have a passion for digital products and their ability to transform how we communicate, how we do business, and even how we live. Perhaps that?s why I feel a sharp pain in my head every time I see someone print out a web page or an email. It feels like a step backwards, and I can barely resist the temptation to ex...

Dev...Ops...DevOps! Hi, I'm Andrew, and I?ve got a problem. I'm one of two System and Network Admins here at DomainTools and because we?re growing, we have enough work for three! Actually we had enough work for three last year but they wouldn?t let me hire anybody :) So I thought I?d write a quick blog post with some fun facts about our network...

2012 was a year of massive change in SEO. Google threw the proverbial farm at us with algorithm updates that shook up the landscape and led SEOs to question everything we thought we knew about ?good SEO?. In light of all these changes, who can you trust to bring the best SEO thinking in the industry? Who is bringing new insights and methods? Who i...

Thank you to all of you who entered the Santas Favorite Whois contest! Santa had a wonderful time reading all of the entries and drew the following names out of the entry bag. The following three people won a FREE DomainTools Professional membership for one year (or a FREE Professional membership renewal for one year) if he or she is a current Doma...

It's that time of year again... Santa would like to give away one of his favorite tools: the DomainTools Pro Membership! Leverage Whois and Hosting History, Reverse IP, Domain Monitor, along with Brand, Name Server, and Registrant Alerts. If you are currently a DomainTools Professional member, we still encourage you to enter to receive a free one ...

One of the DomainTools products that our members depend on most is our Reverse Whois Lookup, which identifies domains owned by a specific company or individual. Longtime members will recall the original ?Registrant Search? launch in October of 2007, over five years ago. Today DomainTools announces a significant update to Reverse Whois, focused on...

Whois Privacy is an important topic here at DomainTools. After all, a primary use of our Whois History product is to get behind Whois Privacy if possible. After all, a primary use of our Whois History product is to get behind Whois Privacy if possible. Just this week Brian Krebs wrote an interesting blog post that does a good job of showing the ...

DomainTools authored an article in with the World Intellectual Property Review, in their Trademarks, Brands and the Internet (TB&I) volume 1, issue 3, which was published recently. In the recent TB&I article, DomainTools touches upon the ongoing battle against online fraud activity and the impact on brands. Those attacks can be very dam...

For over a decade, DomainTools has been helping users find domain names to register with our Domain Suggestions product at Domaintools.com and through our API. In fact, that original ?name spinning? tool was the first commercial product developed at DomainTools. As part of the Marketplace product launch earlier this year, we created a second gene...

It?s time again for another volume of the ?Best of DomainTools Support?. We had some goodies come in over the past few months. For those of you who are newly discovering these ?Best of DomainTools Support? posts, here is some background: DomainTools Support receives a wide variety of inquiries ? from appropriate account-related questions to inqui...

Summer is winding down in Seattle - so what better time to enjoy the sun after work and hit up some mini golf! Good times were had (Ray had the lowest score!), with drinks and food enjoyed after the game. This was also a celebration of September birthdays including Susan, Andrew, Kirsten and Emily. Happy Birthday to all!