Domain Name Registration & Contact Verification
Today, I visited investorsvillage.com, which is one of my favorite sites about stocks and investing, and found this:
What happened?
In 2013, a new Registrar Accreditation agreement was introduced, and domain name registrars are gradually switching over to this new agreement (they are required to if they wish to offer the new domain extensions for example). Under this new agreement, domain name registrars are required to verify the domain name owner’s contact details, and suspend the domain name if they are unable to do so.
Most registrars have interpreted this new requirement as follows: Send a confirmation email to the domain owner, and require them to click a link (or take some other action) when they receive this email. There can of course be differences in interpretation - for example, do they need to send an email per domain, or per account holder? When is the email sent? How long does the recipient have to respond?
In any case, a new problem that domain owners now face is that they must be on the look-out for these emails, because if they miss one, or gets in their spam folder, or otherwise fail to respond, then their domain will be suspended. This seems to have happened to investorsvillage.com, it previously happened to fixtures365.com (a well-known sports betting site), and sooner or later is bound to happen to one of the top internet properties.