Michael Wong

ICANN policy change allows domains to be transferred without owners' consent

On November 12, 2004, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) put in place its new Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars for all accredited domain name service providers.

The previous ICANN policy allowed domain registrars to deny requests to transfer a domain name to another registrar unless you, the domain owner, explicitly confirmed to the domain registrar your intent to transfer.

The new ICANN policy removes that protection. When a domain registrar receives a request to transfer a domain name to a new registrar, domain registrars should still attempt to contact the domain owner to confirm that the request was authorized. However, if the domain owner does not respond within 5 days, your domain name WILL be transferred.

Here's the quote from the ICANN website, "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."

The best way to stop your domain being transferred without your knowledge is to use a domain registrar to "lock" your domain names. Locking your domains is a free service provided by most reputable domain registrars. It prevents unauthorized changes to contacts and name servers, and prevents the domain name from being transferred to another registrar without your knowledge. You may lock or unlock your domain at any time.

If your domain registrar doesn't provide a domain locking service, then maybe it's time you considered switching to one that does, such as Domain Registration Bank.

The largest domain transaction of all time

The largest domain transaction of all time was announced last week. Seattle based Marchex, Inc., said they have reached an agreement to buy a portfolio containing around 100,000 domains from Name Development Limited in a deal worth just over $164 million! Name Development Limited appears to be a corporate entity holding domains owned by Yun Ye's Ultimate Search, a company that registers expired domain names and sells the traffic to pay per click search engines, namely Overture. Marchex estimates that the online traffic to be more than 17 million unique visitors per month in October 2004.

Men.com Domain Sold for $1.3 Million

Last week, a Florida man sold men.com for $US1.3 million, a healthy profit over the $US15,000 he paid for it in 1997. The buyers, largely entertainment industry folks who have opted to remain anonymous behind the acquiring company, men.com LLC, want to create a portal for men. At the market's height, a handful of domain names sold for millions of dollars, including $US7.5 million for business.com in late 1999 and $US3 million for loans.com in January 2000. Ryan Levy, vice president of marketing for men.com, said the company also has purchased more than 1,000 other domain names over the past year at fire-sale prices to use in conjunction with the new portal. The seller, Rick Schwartz, believes he could have gotten much more for men.com by waiting longer. But Schwartz, who owns more than 4,000 other domain names, said he wanted the money now — so that he can buy others before prices really skyrocket.

Verisign Suspends Controversial Site Finder Service

VeriSign has suspended its controversial Site Finder service after receiving a formal demand from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) late last week to suspend the service, which is itself responsible for awarding VeriSign the rights to manage major domain names. The company, which oversees the management of .com, .org and .net domain names, had been redirecting users that entered incorrect or unavailable domain names to the new service, provoking outrage over the knock-on effects, which include making it impossible for anti-spam software to identify non-existent sites. Also, some of the listings on the Site Finder service were paid for, sparking fury over VeriSign's exploitation of its unique position as manager of the world's most popular top-level domain names for profit.

VeriSign Hijacks All Nonexistent Domain Names

VeriSign have added a wildcard "A" record to the .COM and .NET top-level domain DNS zones that resolves to sitefinder.verisign.com. What this means in plain English is when someone tries to visit a nonexistent domain name, they are now redirected to a search engine managed by Verisign, instead of being shown an error message. The new search engine is supposed to improve the user web browsing experience. The search results are provided by Overture, so Verisign will make money out of this "helpful" service. VeriSign is the company which purchased Network Solutions, another company which was given the task by the US government of running the .COM and .NET top-level domains. This will have the immediate effect of making network trouble-shooting much more difficult. Before, a mis-typed domain name in an email address, web browser, or other network configuration item would result in an obvious error message. You might not have known what to do about it, but at least you knew something was wrong. Now though you will have to guess. [Full story: Resolving Everything: VeriSign Adds Wildcards - Slashdot]

ICANN Proposals Put Domain Names at Risk

If you manage any of the 14 generic top level domains, such as .com, .org and .biz, then you risk losing them if they don't keep your registrar informed of your current contact details. Under new proposals from The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is responsible for worldwide domain name policy, every domain owner will be obliged to update their full contact details on ICANN's publicly available WHOIS database annually. The proposal is expected to come into force by the end of May. Icann wants to increase the accuracy of its records by forcing owners to keep their details updated, which would help it resolve possible disputes. Although domain owners currently have to supply full details to the WHOIS database, many do not and the policy has not been widely enforced leading to occasional confusion about domain ownership. Under the new rules, domains with incomplete or incorrect records will be suspended for 15 days and then deleted if the records are still not amended. ICANN's efforts could be affected by the reluctance of owners to place their details on a public database, which could be 'harvested' and used by spammers and bulk mailers. [Full story: Icann changes put domain names at risk - VNU]

Nominet UK to Charge for .UK Domain Transfers

From May 19, 2003, Nominet UK will be charging a fee of £30 + VAT (approximately $53) for transferring a domain name. The .UK Registry insists the charge is being introduced to cover the administrative cost of transferring domain names. Up until now all .UK domain transfers have been free. [Full story: Transfer - Nominet UK]

Is This the End of the Domain Transfer Nightmare?

At the ICANN meeting in Rio de Janeiro this week, a report enticingly named "Policies and Processes for Gaining and Losing Registrars" will if adopted - and it remains an "if" - competition in the market for global top-level domains such as .com, .org and .biz will receive a huge boost and domain owners will be granted rights they have long been denied. The report should ensure that domain registrars will no longer be able to abuse the system and prevent paying customers' efforts to move to a cheaper competitor. The report removes the losing registrar's current ability to stop any transfer by simply failing to acknowledge it. Instead, it will have to give good grounds for stopping a transfer. A transfer will thus go ahead if both the domain owner and the winning registrar agree and there is no complaint. Until now, some registrars have deliberately implemented an over-complex system for renewal - and occasionally nonsensical conditions - in order to either delay a transfer to beyond its expiry date or to make customers give up in frustration. [Full story: Is this the end of the domain transfer nightmare? - The Register]