Which organisation might hold which website records?¶
Website evidence is distributed according to the role each organisation performs. Begin with the record you need, not merely the first company name a lookup returns.
Match the question to the holder¶
A registrar may hold domain-account, payment, access and change records. A registry maintains authoritative domain status and registrar information. A DNS provider may record configuration changes.
A host or cloud provider may hold customer, infrastructure, payment and administrative-access evidence. A website platform may hold publishing history, permissions, messages and store activity. A CDN or reverse proxy may hold customer, request, security and origin-configuration records.
Payment providers hold transactions and beneficiary data. Email or messaging services may hold account, access and communication evidence. An internet provider may identify the subscriber allocated a public IP address at a recorded time. Devices can contain history, files, credentials and evidence of administration.
This resembles assembling a parcel journey: the retailer, payment processor, warehouse, courier and recipient each record a different stage. Asking one organisation for the entire journey is unlikely to work.
Identify the provider’s actual role and the relevant period. The visible IP owner may be only an intermediary, and a cloud company may know only its direct reseller.
The point to remember
Decide which record would answer the question, then approach the organisation whose role would create or retain it.
