hi, relatively new to this forum. I would like to know if WHOIS is the best way to confirm a domain is registred to me. The problem I am having is that WHOIS returns the wholesale company (in this case, tucows). I registered the name through a hosting company (let's not discuss the merits of this in this thread please) so neither my name nor the hosting company shows up in WHOIS. When you use a reseller, how do you independently confirm that you own the name? Thanks.

Hey Jim,
WHOIS is the primary method of viewing domain ownership. I don't know of any other.
Many registrars offer WHOISguard protection (or something similar) for new domains.
This is to protect the privacy of the domain "owner". Check to see if this is the case.

An easy way to know if you have full control of a domain is to look in your domain
account manager and see if you have an option to transfer the domain to another
registrar if you want to.

Thanks Moxxnixx. The problem is that the WHOIS server only shows the "wholesale" owner. Can the wholesale owner confirm my ownership? Can Network Information Centre (NIC) confirm my ownership? Of course, I can check my retail domain account manager, but that sort of defeats the purpose of doing an independent check, see what I mean?

By the way, Wikipedia has a good basic page on "Domain name registry".