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Methods For Securing Your Domain Names

Posted by Admin on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 07:05 AM

A domain name is a valuable asset to any organization or individual especially if it has a good market value. As a domain name owner, you should take necessary steps and adhere to some common security practices in order to protect the specific domain. If you ever lose your valuable domain to the evil hands, it would be very hard to get it back. I would like to cite a real life incident - davidairey.com/google-gmail-security-hijack, where the domain of a popular site was stolen by a hacker. It took a significant amount of time for the site owner to recover the stolen domain. Here are some of the security tips that can help to protect your valuable domain names and the websites that rely on them.

Registering Domain Names

When you try to register a domain name, make sure you place the order with a leading domain registration company which is reputable and has been in the business for quite a long time. If you are unsure about a particular registrar, you could read reviews from other leading sites. You also need to make sure that the particular registrar is accredited with ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers).

Contact Information

While registering your domains you will have to enter the name and address for Registrant, Administrator and Technical persons and contacts. Make sure you enter your name and address (with a valid email address) for the Registrant and Administrative contact fields. Important notices regarding your domain names (transfer request and renewal reminder) will be sent to the email address given for Administrative contact. This would help you to renew your domain in time and avoid unauthorized domain name transfer requests. If you can also avoid using any free email services such a Gmail or Yahoo. Use one from your own company or other domain name on your own server. Make the passwords for these hard to crack!

Selling your Domain

If you intend to sell your domain to someone else, you could either seek the services of domain brokers or thru an escrow service for a secure and safe transaction. There are many reports that domain sellers are scammed by fraudsters especially when the payment mode is Paypal (a leading payment processor). The scammer would pay the money and once he has received the domain to his account, he may raise a dispute in Paypal. As the seller protection offered by Paypal is not applicable for electronic goods, the payment received by seller may be reversed. Hence you should take enough care while selling your domains to others and make sure whether the buyer is a genuine party.

You can also use services like Moniker and Sedo for more secure transactions.

Renew Your Domains Before Expiry

Always try to renew your domains before the expiry date because if you forget to renew the domain – you may either have to pay additional money to retain the ownership for the expired domain (valid only for a specific period of time) or the domain may be bought by someone else. Some domain registrars have the feature of “auto-renewal” through which the domain will be automatically renewed without the initiation of the domain owner. If for some reason you aren’t interested to renew the domain, make sure you have disabled the option for “auto-renewal” else you would be charged for the renewal. If you register a domain for your business, you could also pay for additional years (renewal fee) at the time of registration itself. Typically when you pay for multiple years’ renewal during the time of registration your domain registrar may offer discounted prices.

Here again a valid administrative contact is important. Most domain name registration companies will send renewal notices one month, two weeks, one week and three days before expiration. By monitoring your email you can ensure you will never let a valuable domain name lapse.

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