When you look up a website's owner without touching the website, what public record helps you find their exact street address?

The public record that helps you find a website's owner's exact street address without touching the website is the WHOIS database. WHOIS is a query and response protocol used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, specifically domain names in this context. When a person or organization registers a domain name, they are typically required by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global non-profit organization that coordinates Internet identifiers, to provide accurate contact information to their domain registrar. A domain registrar is a company accredited by ICANN or a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) administrator to register domain names. This mandatory contact information includes the registrant's (the domain owner's) name, organization, street address, email address, and phone number. This data is then published and made publicly accessible in the WHOIS database. To find this information, you use a WHOIS lookup tool or website, which queries the central WHOIS database for the specific domain name you are interested in. The returned record often contains the registrant's street address directly. However, it is crucial to understand that many domain registrants opt for "WHOIS privacy protection" services. These services replace the actual owner's contact information in the public WHOIS record with the contact details of the privacy service provider, such as an intermediary company. In such instances, the street address displayed will be that of the privacy service, not the original website owner. While this obscures the direct public view of the owner's address, the privacy service acts as an intermediary, and in some cases, with appropriate legal processes, the underlying registrant details can be obtained from the privacy service provider.