At what point is a domain name yours? When you have won the auction and its in your account at the registrar? Think again.

On Feb 2, 2008 I won a Snapnames auction with a final price of US$173. The domain has more than made its money back, yesterday it made US$1.50.

When I won the name at Snapnames, the registration provider was ItsYourDomain.com. The domain expires in December 2008 – so I thought it was about time that I transferred it out to another provider.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to get the name transferred. The domain is in my account, I have the auth code, transfer shield was disabled – everything is ready to go.

The only problem was that it appeared that SecureWhois appeared to be on and therefore my new registrar couldn’t send emails to the admin and technical contacts. Here is what it looked like:

Registrant
Pending Renewal or Deletion
SecureWhois, Inc.
pend...@onlineaccess.net
96 Mowat
Toronto, ON M6K 3M1 CA
+1.4165385428
+1.4163520113 (FAX)

After a number of failed requests to disable SecureWhois, I received this email from their Technical Support staff:

“It looks like the domain had expired long time ago and was deleted from our system, it is now in pending delete status at the Registrar level. If you are interested we can check the price to get the domain back from the registrar.”

I was thinking… wait a minute…. something isn’t right here… I won this thing in Feb! So after writing back to their support dept asking them to “get the domain back immediately” – I decided to give them a call…. and by some miracle, they answered their support number!

It turns out that I never received the domain in the first place! Although the name appeared in my registrar account and I could make changes to it, the domain was “marked in the system” as being a backorder, and not actually “allocated” to me. After feeling somewhat in the twilight zone, I was told that they would immediately put a request through to allocate it to me and that I should see the change in the whois record. Sure enough, the change went through. That domain in my account that I’ve been making $$ from is now… well… mine.

What’s the lesson learned from all of this? Just because you see a domain in your account at your registrar, doesn’t mean its yours! Check the whois record.

P.S. Yes, this is a separate issue from yesterday. I don’t know whether its the “law of attraction” here, but everything seems to be happening at once!

As a professional domainer with an ever growing portfolio I tend to attract spam – usually of the email kind. Most of my domains have whois privacy protection, some of the details like my email address change on a daily basis. As such, when spammers try to send me junk, it just bounces.

One thing I can’t seem to shake off is this unsolicited postal mail asking me to renew my domains with registrars and resellers. Yesterday I received three letters in the post. Two were from the “Domain Renewal Group” and one was from the “WorldWideWeb Register”.

I have uploaded a high resolution image of the Domain Renewal Group letter (936k jpg) as well as the WorldWideWeb Register letter (1.7meg jpg). Of course, I have removed some of the identifying information from them.

The Domain Renewal Group letter was printed on paper that’s a big bigger than standard A4, whereas the WorldWideWeb Register used very thin quality A4 sized paper, kind of like the old credit card receipt paper.

Domain Renewal Group

The terms and conditions are in tiny little print and are extremely difficult to read. In fact, you might need a magnifying class to read it properly. Here are some interesting paragraphs:

“If lawsuit(s) are threatened: If we are sued or threatened with lawsuit in connection with Service(s) provided to you, we may turn to you to indemnify us and hold us harmless from the claims and expenses……”

“You warrant that your use of our services is not going go subject us to any claim(s). You further agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless us and applicable registry administrator(s)…..and all such parties‘ directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses…….”

“All fees are non-refundable, in whole or in part, even if your domain name registration is suspended, cancelled or transferred prior to the end of your then current registration term, unless this Agreement specifically provides for a refund.”

When it comes to renewal costs they are VERY expensive – AU$40 to renew a .com for 1 year! They also suggest other names – in my case for .org and .biz at AU$75 each!

WorldWideWeb Register

Their letter tends to focus on the “Updating of your data:” which is the subtitle of the letter.

The letter was sent to my mailing address, but I didn’t own the domain name that it mentioned. The letter had a generic “company name” as the owner. When I checked the domain name, using whois, it was registered to a different owner.

The first line of their letter reads:

“We kindly ask you to update your subscription ensuring that you include your correct data, thus allowing all Internet users to contact you without any problem. In the attached document, you will find basic data about your company, which you should check in order to avoid publication of private websites.”

Apart from the sentence, not actually making sense – I wonder how many people would receive this letter, see that their details are wrong and then provide the correct information. The other interesting thing is that the domain name they mentioned was a .com.au. Traditionally the underlying registry data for .com.au has been hidden away. Perhaps this is a way to obtain that data, domain by domain?

An extract from page two of the letter reads “The applicant must correctly supply their information so that the contracted company may include it in the relevant editions of the World Web Company Register on CD-Rom, as well as in its Internet database…..”

The next page reads “…. I give GT@P – Guia Telefax Anuario Profesional, S.L. the order to publish my company data in the next three annual editions of its Web Company Register, both on the Internet (www.webcompanyregister.com) and on CD-Rom. The total cost per edition of the service contracted …… is 877 euros.”

Wow, so I pay you 877 euro to have my personal details appear in your database! Where do I sign?