It is very easy for anyone to go register a domain name from any number of online vendors. However, from our experience most people do not take proper care of their domain name properties once they have registered them.\u00a0 When you register a domain name for yourself, or someone does it on your behalf, you should make absolutely certain that you or your company are rightly named as the Registrant.\u00a0 You should also make sure that you or the proper organizational position in your business is named as the Administrative Contact.\u00a0 The appropriate person or position should be named as the Technical Contact.\u00a0 Use our WHOIS tool to check the registrant and contact info of your own domain names to see whether that is actually the case. <\/a><\/p>\n When we register domain names on behalf of our clients we always make sure we are all clear from the beginning who the registrant and admin contact should be.\u00a0 We normally name ourselves as the tech contact.\u00a0 One of the things that we do is review and update if necessary the conatct info for each of these annually.\u00a0 This includes names addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.\u00a0 Not only is this an ICANN requirement, it’s simply good management of a valuable asset.<\/p>\n Also remember what vendor you registered your domain name through (ie, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Enom.com, …).\u00a0 Also remember which Top Level Domains (TLD’s) you own (ie, .com, ,org, .net, etc.).\u00a0 The world is full of people that send fake “renewal” notices for TLD’s that registrants do not own.\u00a0 You would be surprised how often these fake invoices get paid by people who are not up to speed on what they really have.\u00a0 If you know what TLD’s you own, and where you have them registered, then you can easily recognize any of these spam notifications that come you.\u00a0 And they come via FAX, postal mail and email.<\/p>\n I recommend you see our earlier blog post, “Where Are Your Internet Properties?”<\/a> for more on how to manage the info required to access your asset.<\/p>\n Occasionally we get a call from a client stating that their email is broken, or Web site is down.\u00a0 When this happens, one of the first things we look for is to see if their domain name is active.\u00a0 And often is is not, but has expired because the annual renewal fee was not paid.\u00a0 If we catch this within a day or two of the expiration we can pay the renewal fee and the name will be reactivated.\u00a0 After a few days, though the name is past the grace period for renewal.\u00a0 When this happens it is snapped up by a domain name reseller.\u00a0 It must then be purchased back from them at whatever price they are demanding.<\/p>\n Extortion?\u00a0 Well, maybe, but more importantly you have lost a possibly very valuable asset.\u00a0 One of our clients found himself in this situation and the company who grabbed his domain name wanted $10,000 for it!<\/p>\n Just as we discussed in the article referenced above<\/a>, make sure the username and password to access the domain name registration account are strictly protected, too.\u00a0 Obviously with that information, anyone can access that record and update the password to lock everyone else out.\u00a0 After that it is a trivial exercise to update all the contact and DNS info.\u00a0 Then, voila! suddenly they own your domain name, are the named registrant, and your name can point to any other Web server they choose!\u00a0 Use strong passwords, not the same one you use for everything else (like so many people do).<\/p>\n Be sure to call <\/a>or contact us<\/a> if we can help with any domain name problems you encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who Is My Domain Name Registered to? It is very easy for anyone to go register a domain name from any number of online vendors. However, from our experience most people do not take proper care of their domain name properties once they have registered them.\u00a0 When you register a domain name for yourself, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domain-names"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where Is It Registered?<\/h2>\n
Protect Access & Keep It Renewed<\/h2>\n