Hold Your Domain Name Dearly

The importance of keeping your administrative contact information close to you.

When a domain name is registered one of the most important details not to overlook is who the administrative contact is for the website domain name registration.

I found out first hand how difficult it is to gain control at a registrar.

This past week I had to do some detective investigation for an owner of a business that has yet to place his website online. He has owned his domain name and has paid for hosting for nearly a year without actually having the site live. Through a series of misfortunate events the employee that was asked to register the domain name was no longer working for this business.

At the time of registration the employee used an email contact to another domain that is now defunct. The employee was the only one that had access to the control panel for the domain. Now, it is close to a year later and the renewal is coming up and if something is not done soon the business is going to loose their name.

I did a whois search and tracked down the registrar. I proceeded to call the registrar and informed them of the whole story. The supervisor directed me to an important document that needed to be downloaded and filled out by the business with supporting documentation attached. Once this document is completed and returned by postal mail (not Email or FAX) it will support the legal requirements for disputes. Additional information in regard to this can be found in the UNIFORM DOMAIN NAME DISPUTE RESOLUTION POLICY at ICANN.ORG/UDRP/UDRP.HTM.

I passed this information on to the business owner and directed them through the form.

I know there are a lot of businesses that take their domain names too lightly. Maybe there is only one employee at your company that has access to all the information. What if something happened to that employee. Even trusted employees can have an untimely death. If the employee used a personal email location for the adminstrative contact that could not be accessed by others to retrive a password for a domain then you would be in the same boat as the business above.

There are a number of ways to guard against this and detailed thoughts have to be considered.

Consider having more than one person have access to all of the accounts. Of course this goes with out saying, they should be trusted employees. As a company owner myself I place this responsablity upon myself. If using employees to handle this important work then there should be set up a checks and balances system. The owner or owners of the company should be able to go in at anytime and verify what is what.

If you need help with any of this feel free to contact us at Professional Web Services.