What is RDDS service and how to query the RDDS service

Question

When I search whois data for some domains for example, liquid-solutions.biz, I get the following:

Registrant Email: Please query the RDDS service of the Registrar of Record identified in this output for information on how to contact the Registrant, Admin, or Tech contact of the queried domain name.

What does this mean and how to query RDDS service?

Solution 1

The short answer is, right now there is no centralized place to go and run an RDDS query. The GDPR became a thing and ICANN changed some rules around in a hurry. They were already planning on eventually replacing WHOIS with a different system with more privacy barriers. As of May 2018 you can make your domain name information completely private if you want to, depending on who you register with, rather than using a proxy service in combination with your domain name.

At the time of writing, 12/2018, temporary gTLD specifications: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data-specs-en If you do a word search on that page for "privacy" it will highlight some sections that directly relate to RDDS.

More about RDDS: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/rdds-labeling-policy-2017-02-01-en

Previous RDDS Policy was rescinded: https://www.icann.org/rdds-labeling-display

Solution 2

whois should be clever enough to do this for you. E.g., on macOS 10.15, if I try whois order.online, I see output from three separate requests:

$ whois order.online
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

refer:        whois.nic.online             <-- IANA refers `whois` to a more specific server

[...]

# whois.nic.online                         <-- `whois` queries the specific server

Domain Name: ORDER.ONLINE
Registry Domain ID: D169045516-CNIC
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.google.com   <-- "the RDDS service of the RoR"
[...]
Registrant Email: Please query the RDDS service of the Registrar of Record identified in this output for information on how to contact the Registrant, Admin, or Tech contact of the queried domain name.
[...]

# whois.google.com                         <-- `whois` queries the RoR's server

Domain Name: order.online
[...]
Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1246381911
Registrant Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1246381911
Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Registrant City: Toronto
Registrant State/Province: ON
Registrant Postal Code: M4K 3K1
Registrant Country: CA
Registrant Phone: [phone]
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

It's not super-useful information, but it's as much as you can get with whois.

Solution 3

It suggests querying registrar's WHOIS service directly to possibly get more detailed information (see the "Registrar" fields earlier in the result). In this case, as of now:

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.web.com
Registrar URL: www.udomainname.com

But, as already said, if registrant makes their information private, the result may be the same. Which seems to be the case.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#whois.2

RDDS. Registration Data Directory Services refers to the collective of WHOIS and Web based WHOIS services.

Comments

[William Isted]

+1 Still working 2021. Was trying to get an email for a domain to send a message to because the client doesn't know which email they used for registration. Whois server returned by the query didn't have a web interface available which is really helpful. whois command retrieved queried it and returned the un-redacted info.

[Admin]

Working 2022! thank you