A couple of years ago I had a very strange experience:

I was talking to several people online (that I met on a message board) and discovered that they were fictional. Someone apparently had taken real identities he/she found online and created fictional characters with them. One of them had an actual website using the person's fictional name as the url. Of course, the domain had a private registration and the site has now been taken down.

My question is this:

Is there any way that I can find out who was behind that site? I'm still bothered by this and I'd like to find out who I was talking to and why this person (or persons) went to all this trouble. No financial information was ever exchanged and my own identity wasn't been stolen. Extremely puzzling.

Thank you.

There should be email of whois protection service. Email them. They are supposed to forward your emails to the domain name owner.

Originally Posted by WebhostGIANT-Rob

There should be email of whois protection service. Email them. They are supposed to forward your emails to the domain name owner.

that's rite

The site has been taken down and the domain name is up for sale. That's the problem.

I'm now wondering if there's any way to check the past history of this domain...even though it had a private registration.

Also, even though the website has been taken down and the domain name is now up for sale again....doesn't this person need to continue paying to keep their registration information private? What happens to this private registration information when the domain name expires?

I went to a site called Domain Tools but they want $15 to look at the registration history. Is there any way to do this for free?

Originally Posted by parsleyandsage

The site has been taken down and the domain name is up for sale. That's the problem.

I'm now wondering if there's any way to check the past history of this domain...even though it had a private registration.

I suppose domaintools paid subscription can open this information for you.

Yeah, I think domaintools has the only domain history database but you need to pay in order to access it.