Warning: Your website might be at risk!
A recent change at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has put in place an email verification requirement for the owner contact listed with the domain’s registrar.
This new rule states that when the owner contact data is updated (whether it be email address, physical address of the business, etc.) or moved to a new registrar, a verification email will be sent to the email address under the owner contact WHOIS data of the domain name.
If the domain name owner does not verify the link in the email within 15 days, the domain name will be suspended by ICANN. And as such your website will go down —including services such as email and software associated with the domain name. This has already happened to several customers.
While the action of this new verification is simple enough, not many business owners are aware of the rule change. And with the amount of SPAM based on domain name registration that many of us receive daily, it’s very easy to overlook the ICANN verification email as just another SPAM message.
Since CyberMark is not the legal owner of your domain, we do not receive these verification emails. Only you can prevent your website from going down due to an owner verification email.
What can you do to prevent interruptions?
The only sure way to prevent an issue is to a) make sure your owner contact email address is valid, and b) be on the lookout for email from your domain name registrar or ICANN.
How to check the Owner Email on file with your registrar.
- Go to https://whois.domaintools.com
- Enter your domain name and click “Searchâ€
- Scroll down the page until you see the WHOIS record, it will look like the below image.
- Check the registrant email; this is where the ICANN verification emails will be sent. In the below example (for www.cybermark.com) see the yellow highlighted section for our Registrant Email (the email addresses underlined red can be ignored).
- This is the email address that needs to be valid and checked regularly.
