Lock Em Down Tight

[Badger]

I see the new ICANN regs allowing transfer requests to be granted on a domain even when you dont reply to the registrars request for transfer (which as we all know sometimes come from a foreign entity of whom you know nothing about) to be nothing but an enticement just too good to resist for those wonderful scammers out there.....

What a bizarre decision..

The likes of our Mr Michael Murphy (tnbaf) I guess, instead of appraisal scamming unsuspecting domainers, will now turn his hand into scouring whois looking for unlocked domains and then issuing a request for transfer. Which, if you happen to be on vacation or something, will then go through.....

Another problem is should you register domains (as account holder) for customers and these are entered as Owner/Admin in the WHOIS, then these transfers can get processed without any further notice from yourself (the Owner can approve the transfer).

Good old ICANN.

But anyway fellow NP'rs, if you havent done so already, MAKE SURE EACH AND EVERY DOMAIN YOU OWN IS LOCKED.

You have been warned (as Jeff says)

 

[lind]

I have a few domains at joker.com, they sent me a letter few days ago, announcing that all names on all their accounts will now be set to "locked" automatically. That's the proper reaction I think, all registrars should do that. You can always unlock your domain when it's nescessary.

 

[homebuyer]

Some registrars have no visible lock feature to check off.

ICANN has done the most irresponsible thing imaginable. To illustrate the possible consequences here, two days ago I was contacted by someone who noticed that I had just purchased a domain. He claimed to be a network administrator who needed to authorize a transfer of his friend's domain that was still using the email address associated with the domain I had recently purchased. He said the domain owner was out of the country and wanted me to to authorize the transfer when the email arrived at my new domain. Now all he has to do is wait five days and the transfer will go through.

After visualizing this scenario, I tried to lock all my domains in various accounts. Godaddy and dotster were easily locked, but some others had no lock features that I could see. And one registrar that has my domain from a snapback was in german. I remember "oh tannenbaum, oh tannenbaum.." from my German elementary school teacher, but I think it had something to do with a Christmas tree, so I have to learn some German real quickly if I am to find the site's lock feature.

On a related note, I don't know about you but can anybody say let's be a checkin those obituaries and running whois searches for the domains they owned? Heehehehhehehehhehehhehehe...just kidding.

 

[Badger]

On a related note, I don't know about you but can anybody say let's be a checkin those obituaries and running whois searches for the domains they owned? Heehehehhehehehhehehhehehe...just kidding.

Sad, but relative point. And one to which the scammers amongst this industry will leap upon.....