WHOIS is important for several reasons:
Identifying the owner of a domain name: WHOIS can be used to find out who owns a specific domain name, which can be useful for a variety of purposes. For example, if you're trying to contact the owner of a website, you can use WHOIS to find their contact information.
Legal and regulatory compliance: WHOIS data is often used to identify the owner of a domain name for legal and regulatory purposes. For example, law enforcement agencies may use WHOIS to track down criminals who are using the internet for illegal activities.
Research and investigations: WHOIS can be used by security researchers, investigative journalists, and others to track down malicious websites, identify the owners of spam and phishing sites, and uncover other types of online fraud.
Maintenance and troubleshooting: WHOIS data can also be used by technical personnel to troubleshoot problems with a website or domain name, such as determining the correct nameservers to use or identifying the registrar of a domain name.
Internet Governance: WHOIS data can be used by ICANN(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and other organizations that oversee the internet's infrastructure to make sure that domain names are registered and used in accordance with established policies.
Intellectual property: If a domain name is used in a manner that infringes on someone else's intellectual property rights, WHOIS can be used to identify the owner of the domain name so that legal action can be taken.
Note that over time, the privacy concerns arise and regulation around WHOIS started to change. Some TLDs like .com has started to implement privacy protection service where registrants can hide their contact information which can be still accessible only to authorized parties.
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