whois

[Barry Margolin]

In article <a4ushq$77k at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
Will Yardley  <william-nospam-newdream-net at no.spam.veggiechinese.net> wrote:
>i've seen this once or twice before; someone's managed to put an
>incorrect entry into that whois database presumably.

They're not "incorrect" entries, they're ordinary host records.  WHOIS
looks for any entry that begins with the string you provided (unless you
prefix it with "!" to indicate that you want an exact match).  Lots of
people like to register hostnames that begin with "microsoft.com" simply to
cause them to show up in the WHOIS output.

Anyone can register a hostname in the WHOIS database.

NSI announced a few weeks ago that they're going to start purging orphan
host records, i.e. hosts that aren't referenced as servers for any
domains.  That should clean up most of them.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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