Methods of obtaining administrative e-mail contact for a domain

Question

I know two methods of obtaining this:

• whois registrar record
• SOA DNS record

However, when signing up for an e-mail feedback loop program, the ISP came back with the e-mail address of one of our managers as the contact. That e-mail address does not appear in any of the information above.

What other methods can you obtain an administrative e-mail contact for a domain? It is a valid e-mail domain in this case.

Answer 1

There are only few services that provide abuse contacts beside WHOIS and SOA. The ones I know are:

1. http://abuse.net/
2. http://abusix.org/

But it is even possible that the abuse contact is maintained manually in feedback loops.

Answer 2

The whois system is the traditional way of getting this information. The other traditional thing to do is email abuse@ -- If there's a domain associated with the IP start there, and work your way through the upstream providers until you get a response.

The address in DNS SOA records may not be related to anything but DNS, and sometimes isn't even valid.
In my experience whois is the best place to go.

Answer 3

If you own the whole block of IP it might come from arin's information regarding the block itself.

Arin keeps three different contact, Tech, Admin and Abuse.

That manager might be the Admin contact.

Answer 4

whois and dig SOA reveal the public information about a domain and it's DNS.

The manager may also be listed under the tech contact for the ip block if you are a ripe member (you can check that with whois).

I've also noticed, the registrars usually keep the email addresses on file of what the admin/tech etc contacts are set to.

I've had this previously with nominet emailing an old address in regards to an issue, rather than the one on the whois.

Hope this helps.