Policy changes on domain transfers
Wed, Nov 17 2004
I've mentioned in the past that some companies have had problems with domains expiring as a result of not receiving renewal emails: if the email address kept on file for your domain registration is out of date, there is the risk that your domain could expire and you won't know anything about it until your email and website stop working. Or worse, when it's dropped from the domain name system and then registered by your competition.
Well, now there is an even more urgent reason to make sure your contact email address is up to date: the policy regarding domain name transfers has just been changed, making it much easier to transfer domains to new owners and registrars. And much easier to lose your domain as a result.
In the past transfer of domain names in the top-level domains (.com, .net, etc) required that transfers be approved. When a transfer request was submitted, an email would be sent to the owner of the domain name asking them to approve the transfer. If the owner failed to respond within a certain timeframe the transfer was automatically rejected. That meant that all a domain owner had to do was ignore any bogus transfer requests and nothing would change on their domain.
As of last Friday (November 12th) the policy has been reversed. The way it works now is that when a domain transfer request is made a confirmation email is sent to the domain owner, but the domain transfer automatically goes ahead unless the owner responds and explicitly rejects it.
That makes it much easier to transfer domains, but it also makes it much easier to hijack them. If a registrar sends you a "please confirm" email and you ignore it, you can lose your domain forever without further notice.
As a result it is now absolutely life-and-death critical that you make positively certain that your domain name has a functional email address associated with it.
I don't know if I worded that strongly enough, so here it is again:
Check your domain name registration email address *right* *now*
If you don't, you may not receive transfer confirmation emails and then lose your domain to some random hijacker who decides to submit a fraudulent transfer request.
You can check your domain registration details using the 'WhoIs' tool online at:
www.stay-sane.com/whois
The output of the tool will contain a lot of technical stuff you don't have to care about, but the important thing is to look down near the end where it lists the contact details of the domain owner, technical contact, etc. Make sure the contact email addresses listed there are valid and go to accounts that are checked on a regular basis.
Another safety measure you can take is to activate the "domain locking" feature with your registrar. By "locking" your domain (after you've made all the updates you need to, such as the contact email address) you can prevent any alterations being made without first "unlocking" it.
Domains have become important business assets. Make sure you don't lose yours.
If you need any help with these issues please feel free to contact Internet Vision Technologies.