Keep tabs on your domain name or you could lose it

13 April 2006

What would happen if you woke up one morning to find your business no longer owned its Internet domain name? The issue has come into sharp focus in recent days with the opening of the new .eu domain name.

For many companies such a loss would be catastrophic. But losing control of your domain name, even for a few days, happens, and to some big companies (although few admit to it). These days, if you forget to renew your domain name, someone out there is likely to snatch it up.

The problem for domain name owners is that there are plenty of individuals and some domain name ‘investors’ watching out for valuable domains to lapse and pouncing when they do. These ‘drop-catchers’ monitor domain renewals and, if the owner doesn’t re-register on time, they snap up the name, quite legally. There are even companies, such as GoDaddy, that specialise in this form of poaching, running auctions for names coming up for renewal.

Domains don’t expire overnight, however. If the owner doesn’t renew by the expiration date, the domain enters an ‘expired’ status. It then enters a 40-day grace period when all services are shut off, but the owner may still renew for a standard fee. For a domain name owner, 40 days without use of their domain could be ruinous, so knowing what to do if this happens is crucial.

Third parties charge high fees to sort out these problems, even though the owner can reactivate the domain fairly simply, as long as the registered administration contact or technical contact is still with the company. Often they’re not, though, which is where the problems begin.

After 40 days, an unrenewed domain’s status changes to ‘redemption period’. During this it costs the owner an additional fee to reactivate and re-register the domain.

Finally, the domain’s status will change to ‘locked’ as it enters the deletion phase. This lasts five days and on the last day, between 11am and 2pm Pacific time, the name will officially drop from the ICANN database and will be available for registration by anyone. That’s when the feeding frenzy begins.

The whole process is supposed to end 75 days after the listed expiration date. However, domains can now be grabbed more quickly. Instead of going through the full process, names are being transferred to new owners in 30-45 days. This creates real problems for domain name owners who can’t locate their registered contacts or fail to get them to co-operate. Effectively, the domain is out of their control.

Things are a bit better if a company loses a domain name that it believes is copyrighted or trademarked. It can seek to recover the name by appealing to an arbitration panel under ICANN’s dispute resolution policy. It also could take the domain’s new owner to court. It also all takes time, during which your Web site is out of commission.

To make matters worse, we have seen unsolicited mail requesting payment for domain name registrations circulated by unofficial companies. These requests sometimes look like invoices and by signing the ‘renewal’ you actually sign away ownership of the domain. It’s like phishing but for domain names.

Ensure you’re managing your domains professionally, keeping registered administration and technical contacts up to date and knowing well in advance when the domain registrations expire. You should know who’s acting for you and not sign papers regarding domain names with any party you haven’t checked out as bona fide. It’s worth taking care because if you don’t manage your domains properly you could wake up to a big, and very expensive, problem.

Peter Matthews is MD of branding agency Nucleus

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name

I have read and agree to the terms and conditions