WHOIS is a protocol that makes it easy to see the information a given domain has been registered with either through a command line or with the help of special web-based lookup sites. This information includes the names, address and e-mail address of the owner, administrator, technical and billing persons in addition to the registrar organization the domain name has been purchased through, the creation and expiration dates. Aside from a few country-code TLDs that have certain limitations, the WHOIS info of any domain can be modified freely anytime, which is quite necessary provided that according to the policies of the top-level Internet Corporation, ICANN, all details ought to be current and valid all of the time. Inability to comply with these policies may lead to losing the ownership of a domain and in many cases a domain name might even be deleted from the Domain Name System and released for free registration.