Do you know who owns your domain names?

How important is it to keep your contact information up to date, and make sure that the domains you register for your business have been registered properly? Very.

A recent case illustrates just what can happen if you don’t.  An employee of Aurora Health Center in Chicago was in charge of registering domains for the clinic, he purchased five.  Unknown to the clinic however, when he purchased them with clinic funds in 2002, he registered them under his own name.  His employment with the clinic was terminated in 2004, and the domain registration issue wasn’t noticed until June 2009. 

When it was discovered that the domains were not in the clinic’s name they approached their former employee to rectify this, he promptly demanded $13 000 before he would transfer the domains and actually threatened that he was negotiating the sale of one of the domains to a third party.  The clinic is now suing to stop him from selling the domain and to force him to transfer it back to them.

Most reputable web designers and resellers will register the name to you directly, often with you listed as administrative contact as well, some list themselves as admin contact, but this is something that can easily be changed if the relationship sours and you need to transfer or update your domain.  Unfortunately I’ve seen many times where this has not been the case and designers and resellers have registered the domain directly to themselves when they should not have.  The consumers often don’t know any better, if you’re setting up a new business often you’re relying on the expertise of the person who is designing your site.  The professional you hired should know better, but there are some out there who either don’t care or register it this way to ensure future leverage over you and your email and/or website.

There are two things to be learned here. 

1. Next time you register a domain, make sure you or your company is listed as the Registrant, or owner.
2. Keep your contact information up to date, this wouldn’t have happened if the domain holders had done a simple whois query when the domain was first registered to see who was listed as owner and main contact