registrars The Thing That Should Be Added to Every Registrar's Terms of Service

[equity78]

When you look at the Terms of Service for any registrar they are all basically the same, they are looking to cover their behind. Go Daddy wants you to know they may record a conversation without your permission:

You are aware that GoDaddy may from time-to-time call you about your account, and that, for the purposes of any and all such call(s), you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy during those calls; indeed you hereby consent to allow GoDaddy, in its sole discretion, to record the entirety of such calls regardless of whether GoDaddy asks you on any particular call for consent to record such call. You further acknowledge and agree that, to the extent permitted by applicable law, any such recording(s) may be submitted as evidence in any legal proceeding in which GoDaddy is a party.

Or that you hold them harmless for whatever might arise:

16. INDEMNITY

You agree to protect, defend, indemnify and hold harmless GoDaddy and its officers, directors, employees, agents, and third party service providers from and against any and all claims, demands, costs, expenses, losses, liabilities and damages of every kind and nature (including, without limitation, reasonable attorneys’ fees) imposed upon or incurred by GoDaddy directly or indirectly arising from (i) your use of and access to this Site or the Services found at this Site; (ii) your violation of any provision of this Agreement or the policies or agreements which are incorporated herein; and/or (iii) your violation of any third-party right, including without limitation any intellectual property or other proprietary right. The indemnification obligations under this section shall survive any termination or expiration of this Agreement or your use of this Site or the Services found at this Site.

I believe there is one thing lacking in the terms of service and it should be added, that item should be titled Domain Theft.

There should be clear information detailing what the registrar will do for you if one of your domains are stolen.

The latest case of a domain stolen is AQM.com. This domain moved from Enom to NameSilo and here is what the NameSilo customer service rep said to the registrant who had their domain stolen:

Van: NameSilo Support - 7 Datum: 24 mei 2016 13:12:24 CESTAan: Fatih Turna Onderwerp:Antw.: Aqm . com stolen

We will not keep replying with the same information. For the last time, you need to work through Enom. You have no affiliation with our company and have never been a Registrant in our system. We therefore have no standing to get involved on your behalf. Feel free to send this to anyone else you like, but the answer will not change, and we will not continue replying with the same instructions. Sorry you do not like our answer, but that does not mean it will change.

The domain left their registrar and moved to Ename. The one thing that helped me from reading that is that I was thinking of opening a NameSilo account and now will never do business with them.

The fact of the matter is that two domainers, Theo from DomainGang.com and @TheLegendaryJP a member here, do more for victims of stolen domains than registrars and ICANN. That needs to change !

ICANN pulls in a lot of money from domain investor activities, they should alot some of those funds to having someone responsible in dealing with domain thefts.

Now domain owners need to do their share as well, using two factor authorization, strong passwords etc...

It is time for registrars to tell their customers specifically in writing what they will do to recover their stolen assets.

 

[golan]

Well I'm afraid we are left to wait until a new registrar appears, domainers friendly...

 

[Kate]

I continue to think that for registrars is not hard to get back a domain to the real owner. If there is a case of steal, just ask the actual owner to proof why the transfer happened.

The problem is to document the sequence of events. Apparently the victim doesn't even know how the theft happened. A registrar is not going to hand over a domain to whomever demands it. There has to be due process.
I realize the discussion is shifting to domain theft, but it's an interesting example, because we see that registrars often are unwilling to go the extra mile and help when things go wrong. Like DU said, a $50000 domain still has a renewal fee of about $10, of which the registrar makes a $1 profit.

Maybe Icann will do something about it one day (if there is money to be made), but do they care about the plight of domainers ?

 

[pablohc86]

Sure they will make 1$ per domains but domainers are the category of people that hold more domains than other people on the earth so I think is worth to help them.
Btw yes also ICANN should help when there is a theft case and i still think it's not so hard to investigate because If i would claim that someone stole a domain of mine, they could watch who is owning it now and ask him to show proof about how he get it. This take just 5 minutes.
IF the actual owner can show a trusted proof, the person that claimed to be stolen need to pay 10k USD for the annoyance. (10k is just to put a relevan number).
If the thief craft a fake proof, the domainer robbed need to show proof of a payment.
If they would do something for help there are tons of easy and effective way to do that.

 

[namezest]

I think the main problem is that people do not read the terms and conditions on anything they just agree or cannot use the product/service. It's the same on pretty much all new TOS no matter what the product or service. The actual TOS on most things has gotten worse especially over the last decade. More transparency is needed and less smoke and mirrors.