Why Are Their Changes in who is?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

On February  5, 2018, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> sites which weren't secure might be blocked or not have good search
> results.

For similar content, Google does now (I believe) rank HTTPS traffic
above non-HTTPS traffic in search results.  For precise terms that
identify your page, I imagine it won't be too bad.

If you own your domain-name and its associated IP address, you should
be able to use Let's Encrypt to get a free domain-validation
certificate for purposes of encrypting.  There are some tools/scripts
that make this pretty easy.  It becomes a little more complex if it's
a shared host, in which case they need to support "SNI" ("Server Name
Identification") as part of the SSL/TLS handshake.  Older IE (like
version 8 or something pretty ancient) doesn't play well with SNI, but
most other browsers of a reasonable vintage should be just fine.
Some hosts want to up-charge you for SSL, but that's kinda skeevy
since a well-configured system should be able to give it to you for
free.

> whois followed by the site only shows the registrar, not an owner.

Depends on which site you check (not the version of `whois`) and who
the registrar is.

In some cases, people want this as a privacy feature.  In other
cases, shady registrars will register your domain under their domain,
preventing you from leaving because your registrar is listed as the
technical contact.  If it's your own site and you want your info
available, your registrar really should be showing your info.  If
it's someone else's site, it's their prerogative whether to obscure
the contact info.

-tim