Didn't know where to post this, so I'll post it in here.

I keep seeing time and time again people falling into the trap thinking the date on a whois record is an accurate record of how long a company has been trading and also that any of the contact details are genuine.

Wrong, plenty of factors can determine why a company would appear as new when in fact they could have been trading years.

They could have only just decided to launch an online presence to legitimately attract more customers to their business.

For reasons beyond a companies control they could have lost their original domain name due to an unscrupulous webhost holding the domain name to ransom for one reason or another forcing a company to choose a new domain name.

Also contact info on whois, not wise to solely use that as a means of tracking down scamming individuals for starters they could simply choose to use the name of their registrar as a contact so you would have no way of tracking them down, unless you got the law involved in some way.

Even though it is now illegal to give false contact information, people will still do it.

Now onto Limited companies.

Just because a company sets themselves up as a limited company doesn't automatically make them a legitimate entity, they can still scam you all it means is their personal assets are protected from the limited company being dissolved or liquidated, well that's the case for the UK anway, unless it can be proved that the company has acted dishonestly.

So you can within reason just shut one limited company down walk away and start another one the next day even.

The companies house website is NOT an indicator as to whether a limited company is legitimate or not just tells you that they are a limited company registered in the wales, scotland or england.

However if the status on the companies house websites says that their accounts have been overdue for quite sometime then that should start some alarm bells ringing.

I would also run a credit check on any supplier you think you would like to do business with.

This may have all been said before, but I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Thanks for reading, I'll let you get back to making deals

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Last edited by RWA; 14-10-2006 at 10:48 AM. Reason: missed a word out, now sentence makes better sense

Hi,
Very good post there. Yes you’re certainly right, whois does not tell the answer if a supplier is legit or not. Lots of people do fall into this trap, as you already mentioned. But whois can be a good way of helping you to see if a supplier is actually a real supplier not a fake, scam supplier. The whois contact information can be useful in some ways but sometimes its not. Just make sure, you do the right things before buying from a supplier.

Hope this helps.

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Very good info there mate :niceone:

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Kelvin MacKenzie is a ****!
Justice for the 96! YNWA

Great post!

I've moved this to the articles section and have also changed the name of the thread to reflect the content a bit more. Hope you didn't mind.. feel free to PM me another title you were thinking of.

Useful post :niceone:

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Originally Posted by Anthony

Great post!

I've moved this to the articles section and have also changed the name of the thread to reflect the content a bit more. Hope you didn't mind.. feel free to PM me another title you were thinking of.

Useful post :niceone:

Thats fine, was just about to look to see who else had replied :niceone:

But just because it isnt a 100% true judge it is always better to do one as well

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Kelvin MacKenzie is a ****!
Justice for the 96! YNWA

Originally Posted by YNWA

But just because it isnt a 100% true judge it is always better to do one as well

True, but I did mention the fact not to solely rely on a whois record.

yea understand mate :niceone:

__________________
Kelvin MacKenzie is a ****!
Justice for the 96! YNWA

Good post!

Just to add to the goodness, lots of online stores hide their “whois” contact information and replace it with registrar data. So just because the data entered is not correct, or no results get return, does not mean a company is not legit. They could simply be hiding their data for privacy issues.

Would you really want your cell phone information on your public whois record? Some might, I wouldn’t.