Hiring
How do I check who owns my domain?
Run a WHOIS lookup on your domain and read the registrant field. It should name your business. If it names your developer, an agency, or a privacy-proxy service you did not arrange, you do not control the single asset everything else depends on.
How to run the check
- Search for a WHOIS lookup tool, or use your registrar’s own
- Enter your domain
- Read the Registrant Organization and Registrant Email fields
- Check the expiry date while you are there — lapsed domains are a common and avoidable disaster
What privacy protection hides, and what it does not
Registrar privacy services replace your details with a proxy, which is normal and fine. What matters is who can log in to the registrar account. If you cannot, privacy protection is hiding a problem rather than protecting you.
Fixing it
Request a transfer with the authorisation code, to a registrar account in your own name. Do it while the relationship is good — it is a five-minute request then, and a negotiation later.
The longer version
This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers it in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who answered this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.