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Do You Really Own Your Domain Name?
Just because you pay the domain name bill doesn’t mean you own it.
That’s right. You may not be the legal owner. Whoever is the legal owner of your domain name, that person has total control over it including – what Web site it points to, what domain name registrar maintains it, changing information about your domain name account, controlling who administers it, and being able to sell it.
Go to the WhoIs database and search for your domain. Whatever contact information is listed for both the “Registrant” fields and the “Administrator” fields, all of it, including any email addresses for these two fields, should be yours.
If you find this information is not yours, there are three possible reasons:
1. Private Listing
2. Host Hijacking
3. Designer/Developer HijackingPhoto by ilco.
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Matt @ Permanent Fitness on November 17th, 2008 8:37 am
It’s not always that black and white.
For some local country domains you will only see your registrar details. This is due to Data Protection laws of these countries, by which it is illegal to distribute personal information to third parties like ICANN
Angela on November 17th, 2008 12:58 pm
Thankfully I do own my domains. I am in the process of doing a domain transfer and my info is in both fields. :)
I’m glad you posted this. Hopefully this will urge some people to take a look and make sure everything is in order with their domain names.
Ray on November 18th, 2008 10:18 pm
I wonder if these means my Go Daddy sites are in question!
Matt Helphrey on November 19th, 2008 2:53 am
Great information!
Is WhoIs the only directory that show this type of info??
cassy on November 21st, 2008 9:41 am
I dont know if i really own it coz anybody can take it from me. or maybe used it for thier own porposes.
James on October 6th, 2009 9:44 am
I do always take the time to register a domain name by my own. I also make them private, so my data is not available to undesired people, however I know that behind the “Private Listing” I am the real owner. Designers and other developers will charge you also more, I do get mines with privacy for less than 10 dollars at boronames.com and all I have to do is update the DNS of the domain to where the hosting company is.
That way I don’t give my billing details to a designer, I only pay them for the design, and I’m sure I won’t loose my domain in the future because some has failed to renew it, and I was not notified…
James-
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