Who Owns your Domain Name?

Your company leases the right to use your firm’s domain name for a period of time, typically it is renewed in one year increments. You have the right to use your domain during that lease period. If you don’t renew your lease, you lose the right to use the domain, and other people on the internet have the fair right to register it and begin using it. So, it becomes critical that your company manages the registration of its domain name.

Here are 3 important steps:

1. Make sure your whois is accurate.  Before we begin, what is a whois? A “whois” is a public record that documents the current owner, or “registrant” of any given domain name. It is how the internet community knows who has the right to use the domain. It is vital that you keep your whois record accurate so that the domain renewal notices are sent to the right person, and so that in the event of a dispute you would have the evidence to prove that you are in fact the registrant. To see your whois record, there are many web based and command line tools. One easy service is provided by domaintools, and their whois url is http://whois.domaintools.com.

A shortcut to using their service is to open up a web browser and type in http://whois.domaintools.com/yourdomain.  For example, to see Click Consulting’s whois record, I opened my browser and entered http://whois.domaintools.com/clickconsulting.com

You will see a lot of great and interesting information on the resulting page. In particular, you’ll want to scroll down to the bottom of the page, and read the “Registrant” information. The registrant should be your firm’s name. Under the administrative contact, it should show the person who is managing and has the authority to manage your domain name. In some cases, this will be the owner or president of your company, and in other cases it will be the outsourced IT consultant that you trust and that you have asked to manage your domain name renewals. The administrative contact is the person who will be notified of renewals and other domain related correspondence. If the administrative contact or registrant information is not accurate, you should update that information with your Registrar immediately.

2. Make sure your domain is renewed. Since your right to use your domain name will expire, it is critical that you ensure your domain is renewed. You should check the expiration date of your domain now. I mean, right now. Stop reading this, and find out when your domain expires. If you don’t know how, use http://whois.domaintools.com again, but this time look for a line that says something like “Record expires” or “Domain expires” or similar. You should see a date. That is the last date that you are allowed to use your domain, and after that day the domain will be available to the internet community at large to register and then use. So, you’ll want to be sure that you renew your domain before that expiration date. Here are some tips for ensuring that your domain is renewed. Set your domain to auto-renew and give your Registrar your credit card. This will help, but your credit card number will expire too, so you’ll need some additional control techniques. Your registrar should email the Admin contact that your domain will expire, so that is why it is important to ensure that your whois is accurate. Additionally, I would set up a recurring Outlook calendar reminder to renew your domain. I would also set up an Outlook event in my assistant’s calendar, and put a yellow sticky on your computer monitor. I would memorize that date and know it like I know my own birthday and anniversary.

3. Make sure your domain is not transferred. People are allowed to “transfer” control of the domain name. This is called a domain transfer. To prevent unauthorized transfers (yes, they do happen), you’ll want to be sure that your domain is in a “Locked” status. A Locked status ensures that all transfer requests will be denied. In addition, you’ll want to know who your actual Registrar is so that you don’t fall victim to some unscrupulous tricks that are played. No doubt you have seen letters from companies like the “Domain Registry of America” that send a notice that looks very official and basically scares you in to “renewing” your domain with them. What their little notices don’t do a very good job of is informing you that you are actually transferring your domain to them, and the underlying implications of a transfer. Although they may state that on their notice, the average business owner does not understand the true meaning of it. So, don’t “renew” your domain with anyone other than your selected Registrar”

As always, if you need any assistance with this stuff, we are here to help.