Lock Those Domain Names
September 13th, 2004 • Technology
I just read about a new ICANN ruling going into effect on November 12, 2004 that impacts all domain holders. Specifically, this rule affects inter-registrar transfers. “Oh, I don’t want to transfer my domain names so I don’t care about this issue,” you say. Read on about how others might try to transfer the domain names away from you.
This new ICANN policy is being put into place to help those domain name owners are with registrars who are unwilling to transfer a domain name that is properly owned and paid up for. Registrars have an economic disincentive to willingly participate in transferring domain names away from their service. Other registrars are happy to do the transfers but don’t have the staff to accommodate the requests that need to be processed. So ICANN has changed the rules to state:
Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default “approval” of the transfer.
In the event that a Transfer Contact listed in the Whois has not confirmed their request to transfer with the Registrar of Record and the Registrar of Record has not explicitly denied the transfer request, the default action will be that the Registrar of Record must allow the transfer to proceed.
So if you parse the above, this means that if your registrar does not respond “yes, transfer is okay” or “no, transfer is not okay” to a transfer request, then the default answer will be assumed to be “yes, transfer is okay”. Also, if the Transfer Contact (generally the domain owner) does not respond, then the default answer is also assumed to be “yes, transfer is okay”. Now the problem with this is that there has been so much spam harvesting of registry records that for most people they either don’t look at emails for their domain email account or they have disconnected it all together.
So what is there to do? Again, back to the ICANN policy (bold added by me):
Instances when the requested change of Registrar may not be denied include, but are not limited to:
- Nonpayment for a pending or future registration period
- No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact.
- Domain name in Registrar Lock Status, unless the Registered Name Holder is provided with the reasonable opportunity and ability to unlock the domain name prior to the Transfer Request.
- Domain name registration period time constraints, other than during the first 60 days of initial registration or during the first 60 days after a registrar transfer.
- General payment defaults between Registrar and business partners / affiliates in cases where the Registered Name Holder for the domain in question has paid for the registration.
So if your registrar allows you to “lock” your domain into that registrar, they can disallow any transfer requests away from them. Most all registrars have this capability but may charge you some amount for the capability. I use BulkRegister and I had to upgrade my account (which now costs me $99/year in addition to my domain name charges - this kind of sucks since I wasn’t paying a yearly fee before) to get the feature.
I urge everyone to check out their registrar and find out how you can lock your domain in. Otherwise you risk your domain being hijacked and held for ransom, or worse.
