WHOIS lookup & website trust score

CheckWhois pulls the public WHOIS record of any domain name and runs a series of live checks on the website behind it — age, encryption, registration data, policy pages — then turns the result into a single trust score out of 100. Use it before you buy from a shop you do not know, or whenever a link looks suspicious.

Tip: enter the bare domain — example.com. A full address such as https://www.example.com/page works too, it is cleaned up automatically.

How CheckWhois works

Every website sits on a domain name, and every domain name has a public registration file called a WHOIS record. It is held by the registry that runs the extension — Verisign for .com, PIR for .org, AFNIC for .fr — and it says when the name was registered, who sold it, how long it is paid up for and, sometimes, who owns it. That record is the closest thing the web has to an identity document, and it is free to consult.

The problem is that it was designed for engineers in the 1980s and reads like it. CheckWhois does the reading for you.

1 You type a domain Just the name — example.com. A full address with https://, www. or a path works too; it gets cleaned up.

2 We query the source The registry's own WHOIS server is queried live, and the website itself is tested at the same time. Nothing comes from a resold database.

3 You get a score and the raw record A single number out of 100, the detail of how it was reached, and the full original record underneath if you want to read it yourself.

What the trust score looks at

Seven things, each worth a fixed number of points, so nothing is hidden in a black box:

How old the domain is. The strongest single signal. The overwhelming majority of fraudulent shops are built on names registered days or weeks earlier, used for one campaign, then abandoned.
Whether the connection is encrypted, and whether the certificate actually validates rather than merely existing.
Whether the site publishes terms, a privacy policy and a way to reach a human. A real business has to; a disposable storefront rarely bothers.
Whether the site answers at all, and how quickly.
How far ahead the domain is paid for. Someone who has paid five years in advance is not planning to vanish next month.
Where it was registered, and whether the owner is published or hidden behind a privacy service.

Extensions that are heavily over-represented in abuse reports, and domains that resolve but serve no website, lose a few extra points. The full breakdown is here if you want the exact weights.

When it is worth ten seconds

Before a first order from a shop you have never heard of, especially one you found through an advert or a social post. When a price is far below everyone else's. When a link arrives by email or text claiming to be your bank, your carrier or a marketplace. When an address looks almost right but not quite — one letter off, an extra hyphen, .co where you expected .com. And when you simply want to know how long a site has actually been around before you trust it with a card number.

What it cannot tell you

CheckWhois reports facts about a domain; it does not investigate the business behind it. A brand-new but perfectly honest shop will score badly, because age, registration horizon and policy pages all count against it at once — a low score is a reason to be careful, not proof of anything. In the other direction, organised fraudsters buy expired domains precisely because they arrive with a history, and a certificate costs nothing. Treat the number as a fast first filter, then use the habits that catch what an automated check cannot.

The service is free, needs no account, and stores nothing about you. Domain names are held briefly in a technical cache so that repeated lookups do not overload the public WHOIS servers, and that is all.

What is a WHOIS record? Everything the public domain-name registry says about a website. How the trust score works The seven checks behind the number, and their limits. How to avoid online scams Practical habits that catch what an automated score cannot.