This knowledge-base article is for third-parties who are attempting to contact the owner/registrant of a domain name registered with Maxer Host.
Due to data protection and account security, Maxer Host cannot share contact details or pass any messages between a third-party and a domain owner (in either direction).
The only exceptions are for law enforcement, court orders, and to prevent cybercrime. In these cases, the police department or legal representative should contact our Abuse department.
In all other cases, our team cannot share any sensitive or non-public information. We can share only public information that is freely available to anyone online, for example, information from a WhoIs database, information found on the website attached to the domain name (if there is a website), or public information found for the domain name on a search engine like Google or Bing.
GUIDE FOR THIRD-PARTIES
1) Check the Public WhoIs Database
Whois lookup tools are available online and accessible to any person. Anyone can use a website like DomainTools to perform a whois lookup for any domain name. You can give it a try by typing the domain name into DomainTools and see what information is displayed about it.
Since GDPR regulations took effect on 25 May 2018, most whois results are redacted for privacy and the whois results will say something like "Registrant Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY". However, the domain owner can choose to display their contact information. For example, if you search for maxer.ie, the whois results will say "Registrant: Maxer Host Limited". We have opted-in to display this information for our own domain name because we see no reason to hide it.
Our advice to domain owners is that if they want to be found by third-parties, they should opt-in to displaying their contact information on the public whois.
Please note that the whois information will differ for each domain extension. For .com domain names, it can display the full address and phone number. For other ccTLD extensions, it may only display the legal owner name, but no other information. Therefore, our advice to domain owners is that if they want to be found by third-parties, steps 2 and 3 are recommended.
2) Check the corresponding website
The easiest way to contact a domain owner is often via the corresponding website. Our advice to domain owners is to have a website with a contact form, so they can be contacted by third-parties.
We advise all new domain registrants to setup a website so they can be contacted by third-parties. If the domain owner has not done this, third-parties should assume that the domain owner has chosen not to be contactable.
3) Email generic email addresses (e.g. postmaster@)
Our advice to domain owners is to setup the postmaster@ address or have it forwarded to a monitored email address. The postmaster address is an RFC-mandated specification. Essentially, every domain on the planet should have this email address enabled as a best-practice. If a third-party cannot find the domain owner by steps 1 or 2, our advise is to try emailing postmaster@<yourdomain.tld> and fingers crossed that it will send to an email address where the domain owner can receive the message.
Taking these 3 points into consideration, if the domain owner still cannot be contacted, third-parties should assume the domain owner has chosen to remain private.
We're sorry that we cannot pass messages between third-parties and domain owners. However, we hope by advising the domain owner and third-party of the above steps that contact can occur in future (if both parties want it!). If your initial attempt to contact a domain owner has failed, perhaps check points 1-3 in a few weeks and see if anything has changed.
Updated by SP on 28/12/2022
