What can I do to contact a domain owner?

Question

A few months ago, I found a perfect .com domain name for a website I'm working on. Bad news: it was taken. Good news: It was set to expire on January 12, 2012. It's not a premium name or anything special that would make me think other people are waiting for it, so I decided to just wait and see if it expired and then buy it up. The site consisted of just one page with plenty of broken links and images. The information was irrelevant and dated. There is one ad, but it doesn't look like the site is being purposefulness squatted. I figured that the owner was done with it, and would let it expire.

However, WHOIS information revealed that the domain was registered via 1&1. Some research reveled that 1&1 has an auto-renew option for domains that's on by default, and quite difficult to disable (I've never used 1&1, so I can't verify if this is true). I started to worry that the current owner (who probably doesn't work in the web development field based on the appearance of the site) had no idea that the domain would automatically renew itself. My fear was realized when the expiration date jumped forward a year right as the domain was set to enter the redemption period. I highly doubt the webmaster would wait that long to renew a domain, especially considering that 1&1 has a $40 fee to renew a domain in the redemption period.

So sent an email to the address listed in the WHOIS database asking if the domain was for sale (Exactly a week ago). The address was [email protected]. If found this odd at first, and suspected that it was not really his address, but I can confirm that he does in fact own lastname.com (another outdated site with little information about anything, and no contact information). The email doesn't sound like some sort of spamtrap that he doesn't actually use, either.

Now I'm stuck. I starting to doubt that the owner will respond, and I'm admittedly disappointed that I may have lost such a perfect domain. I'm working on finding other suitable names, but I don't want to give up on this one until I know it's out of reach.

So, what else can I do to obtain this domain name?

Solution 1

If any of the WHOIS information is accurate, or any personal information is available on the domains in question (for instance, if their names are accurate in their email address), you could always do some old-fashioned sleuthing! Search and see if they have any accounts on:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Etc.

A Google search might also bring up things like places of employment, home phone numbers, and other avenues of contact.

If that doesn't pan out, you might find some leads on their lastname.com page that would help you track them down.

With all of the information the average person has online, I would be very surprised if you didn't find something that leads to the person who owns this domain.

Solution 2

I went through a similar futile exercise a few years ago. Someone had the singular version of a plural domain name I actively use, and people were getting confused. The singular version website is poorly maintained, and email to any contact info I could locate for it was either bounced or ignored.

Bottom line, you can't force someone to negotiate with you (or even communicate with you) just because you want their domain name. At some point you just have to give up and move on. Or if it's valuable enough to you, hire a PI to look them up and go camp on their doorstep.

Solution 3

You can find the contact email from the Whois in 3 ways. One is from Whois, and the seconds is from information, and the third is from DNS records.

Just replace your domain in the following link and see,

1. whois
2. Website info
3. dns records

The screenshot of DNS record page is:

Comments

[zagyi]

Like I said, I've already tried using WHOIS to contact the owner.

[Manigandan Arjunan]

have you gone through the three links above.. the contact email presented on the links differs

[Lèse majesté]

Only the WHOIS info is useful in this case. The "website info" link just provides the contact information of the registrar (MDNH/Moniker Online). The "dns records" page just lists the SOA email address, which is usually the email address of the web hosting company who's hosting the DNS, or a generic "hostmaster" address. Put in your own domain name and you'll find equally meaningless info for the second 2 links.

[zagyi]

I've been able to find some more information about this guy, and while none of it is helping, I've built quite a trail and I still hope something will lead me to him.

[Simon Woodside]

If they have an unusually name, try just calling them.

[Admin]

Links are all directing to the same page now.

[Alston Antony]

I can confirm through personal experience that if issue is related to legal issue when you contact either hosting or domain company they will contact the domain owner for your. eg: A DMCA report.