THE THEFT OF A DOMAIN: be careful who you register your domains through.
I spent much of today trying to recover a domain on behalf of one of my clients.
My client had their domain registered through a Planet Domain reseller called Rycom Technology. At some point in history, Rycom and my client fell out over a dispute about money.
Yesterday my client rang me to say that their email was down and so I investigated only to find that their website was down and all because their domain registration had expired (not good). I don’t know if a renewal notice was ever sent but I’m guessing not.
Firstly, I attempted to transfer the domain onto our system (iWorld Creative is also a domain reseller) then I remembered that you can not transfer a .com while it is “on hold” – a status given to expired domains.
My client contacted Rycom to get the domain renewed but, according to my client, Rycom refused. Yup, you heard it here first, folks. They flatly refused to renew the domain.
So we couldn’t transfer it, we couldn’t renew it – my client was stuck! His business now had no website, no email and was in danger of losing his search engine positioning as a result.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I managed to get it renewed and then transferred across to our system (perfectly legally).
But then, later today, I received an alert notifying me that the very same domain was being transferred OUT. I quickly put a stop to this and called my client. My client confirmed that he hadn’t initiated this outbound transfer so I’m now left wondering who has tried to transfer the domain ILLEGALLY.
This action is effectively theft. I’m not saying who I think attempted to steal this domain, suffice to say that they would need the domain’s registry key (domain password) to get as far as they did. The domain’s registry key does not change when you transfer a domain.
It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my client. I’ll let you make your own guesses.
This is a story that is becoming all too familiar to me. Domain nightmares are becoming all to common place so you should be extremely careful who you trust with your businesses domain.
If you want a great price and even better service on domain registrations or transfers. Call me direct on +61 8 6461 6119 or drop us a line
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