It takes innovative practices to beat competitors, right? But the truth is that many business owners don’t feel like following them when it entails the adoption of tools and solutions that are difficult to implement. An interesting and rather unexpected alternative is to take advantage of such basic information as WHOIS domain records.
This data happens to be accurate and well-recorded and organizations can access it through WHOIS database download services. In this post, let’s talk about six ways WHOIS data can support companies in their quest to outperform their competitors and outsmart fraudsters.
1. Fight Cybercrime
A comprehensive WHOIS database serves well in detecting and acting against cybercriminals. Businesses and individuals can use it to view such details as website’s domain age, registrants’ names, contact details, registrar’s specifications, tech support professional information, and more.
This comes as a handy precautionary strategy for any businessperson who wants to check online entities’ credibility. For example, cybersecurity specialists can review key domain information to identify operators behind a suspected domain and then examine their connections to known malicious entities.
2. Beware of Phishing
Illictly collecting sensitive information is the main goal of phishing. As a business owner, the last thing you want is to give out personal or company’s information to thieves. Sadly, some phishing attempts are not obvious as perpetrators use hidden ways to conduct attacks. This includes creating fake websites, enticing personal communication, or posing as potential business partners such that users fall into a trap.
Here’s where WHOIS databases let organizations be a step ahead. You can learn more facts behind a person’s corporate website or email or compare contact details with those stated in the WHOIS record. Are there some strange inconsistencies? These people may not be who they pretend.
3. Keep Track of Competition
By tracking the domain-related behaviors of your competitors, you can have an advantage over them. In fact, with WHOIS databases, users can get real-time updates when other players in the market update, add, or discontinue domains. This is beneficial for different reasons.
For example, by searching newly registered domain names, businesses can learn about competitors’ next plans when they put up new websites. This can help figure out their new services or business moves.
4. Select Partners
Partnerships are necessary in today’s business landscape, and you don’t want to team up with everybody. You can use WHOIS databases to check the credibility of new partners by comparing their domain data with how the company presented itself or with the information mentioned on their website.
With WHOIS records, you can also assess how long they have been in business, and, therefore, whether they seem stable and trustworthy.
5. Expand Your Brand
Smart businesses know that selecting the right domain name maximizes their chances of success. So when they want to expand their brands or launch new product lines, they try to secure relevant and distinctive domains early.
Monitoring WHOIS records’ information allows finding out which domains are currently available and keep track of registration expirations. And if the desired name is already taken, businesses can also use WHOIS data to contact the current owner to negotiate a purchase. Going through this information can also help investigate the previous history of a domain and see inappropriate connotations might cause problems in the future.
6. Safeguard Intellectual Property
Resolving copyrights and trademark issues is important to many business owners whose reputation and revenue streams are at stake. In fact, brands that are confusingly similar to you can confuse your customers and drive sales away.
Leveraging WHOIS database download services allows detecting the names that closely resemble your domain. It will help you watch out against intellectual property infringement and take actions to protect your rights. For instance, you can find contact details of the potential impostors and get in touch with them to resolve issues.
WHOIS domain data has various useful applications. Once you learn how to navigate through a WHOIS database, you’ll have a great tool added in your arsenal for the achievement of your business objectives.
About the Author
Jonathan Zhang is the founder and CEO of Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) — TIP is part of the Whois API Inc. family which is a trusted intelligence vendor by over 50,000 clients.