This time I will explain some you should know before registering your domain
1. “Transfer-out” fees
Buried in the fine print of a registrars’ “Terms of Service” will be a hidden
fee authorizing them to charge your credit card a “transfer-out” fee if
you move your domain to another registrar.
2. The fine print from hell
Most
people (read: nobody) actually reads the long, odious Terms of Service
for anything they buy online. Some registrars bury truly chilling things
in these terms like the aforementioned “transfer-out” fees and in one
mind-boggling case a “power-of-attorney”.
3. “Pay-as-you-go”
This
is where you make a multi-year interest-free loan to the registrar. It
works like this: You register a domain with them for example, 5 years
(perhaps to obtain a discounted rate), you expect your domain name to be
registered for 5 years. Think again, some registrars will pay the
registry for 1 year and pocket the rest of your money.
Then
for the rest of your five year term they’ll renew each year for one
year. Usually this is coupled with a strict “no-refunds” policy, so an
odd situation occurs: they stand to make more money from your original
registration if they lose you as a customer before your full 5 years are
up, so providing poor service to the point where you leave actually
adds to their bottom line.
4. Whois edit fees and locks
Every
time you register a domain name, the details of that domain
registration must be published in a publicly accessible database called Whois.
One
of the functions a registrar is supposed to be providing to you is the
ability to change those whois records. Some registrars (especially the
bargain basement outfits) register your domain for a dirt-cheap price
and then ding you with an “administration fee” when you want to edit
your Whois record.
Some
others may also “lockdown” your domain for 60 days everytime you make
an edit to your record, preventing you from moving the name out to
another registrar.
5. Premium whois privacy services
Because
your domain record is public for all to see, some registrars want to
upsell you to “privacy services” or “whois masking”, “private
registration”, where they put their own info in the whois record instead
of yours.
The
important thing to know here is that in the eyes of the domain Registry
to which all the Registrars interact, and the Registry’s oversight body
(like ICANN, or in Canada, CIRA), whoever is listed in the domain whois
record as the domain Registrant is the legal owner of the domain name.
Keep that in mind, if you use a service like this, they own the domain, not you,
notwithstanding whatever contract or Terms of Service you enter into
with them to “own” this name on your behalf. If it lands in a dispute
proceeding it will be an open and shut case: they own the name.
Taking
it one step further, some “privacy” services will get you to sign up
for the whois privacy service and then they turn around and happily
offer to sell your true data to anybody else who cares to pay for it.
6. Mining whois and domain slamming
Because
all the data is there for the taking, spammers and marketers “mine” the
whois database and harvest registrant data including addresses, fax
numbers and email addresses. This is a real problem, and there have been
very slow moving Whois database reform processes creeping through ICANN
as well as CIRA in Canada.
In
the meantime though, people may wonder why is it that shortly after
they register a domain name, they start getting all kinds of marketing
spam in their mailbox. This is because their email address is being
harvested by robots from the Whois database. There is a free service to protect your email address called MyPrivacy.ca.
The
variation on this is some registrars (and there is one outfit who is
particularly notorious for this) which is mining the whois database for
registrant information, and then mailing out what look like renewal
invoices for either those domain names or variations of them.
Unsuspecting
recipients think they’ve received a renewal invoice on their domain and
then remit payment, initiating a domain transfer without realizing it.
Surprise, you’ve been slammed. In the worst cases your website and email
comes crashing down as your DNS services terminate with your old
provider.
Domain lock-in (a.k.a You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
7. The registrar-lock
There has historically been a real problem with “domain slamming”
(see above) and unauthorized domain transfers, so the “registrar-lock”
was created to protect a domain against this. If the registrar lock is
set, nobody can transfer your domain away from you. This is actually a
good thing and best practices include having this set for all your
domains. The sharper registrars enable it by default when they register
or transfer a domain for you.
Alas,
this lock can become a real problem for you if it is turned on and the
registrar will not turn it off, or give you the ability to turn it on or
off yourself.
8. The domain auth-code
Some
of the Top-Level-Domains (TLDs) run on a protocol called “EPP” and to
further guard against unauthorized transfers, a domain must have an
8-character auth-code supplied before it will transfer. Current examples
are .BIZ, .INFO and .ORG. The current or “losing” registrar holds this
code. You need it if you want to move your domain away. Hopefully they
will give it to you.
Traffic and monetization scams
9. Domain parking
You
may not know this, but domain parking is big business. You know, when
you click on a link somewhere or make a typo entering a web address and
you wind up on some crapola “search page” optionally throwing up a
million pop-up ads? That is a parked domain and the larger players can
park thousands of domains and make literally millions of dollars
“monetizing” them via domain parking.
You
know who has access to thousands of domains? Domain registrars. Some of
them offer domain registrations and rock bottom prices just so they can
monetize the parked names. This may not bother you, but some people
don’t realize they’re paying for something their registrar then uses to
generate more revenue for themselves.
(Update:
since the time of writing one registrar in particular rolled out a
“Make money from your domains’ parked pages” initiative, which surprised
me since I knew them to be one of the biggest parked page monetizers
around — they make millions per month monetizing their customers’ parked
domains — until I looked at the details: Packages start at 3.99/month.
They are actuallycharging their
customers for domain parking monetization. What audacity. If you
actually have a domain that’s actually worth something parked, take it to a parking service. They pay you to park your pages. Not the other way around).
10. “Free” URL Forwarding
Some
people may wonder why the price ranges vary so much for domain
registrations and what the difference is between somebody who offers
everything but the kicthen sink for $2/year while others charge more
than 10 times that much for basic DNS and URL forwarding.
Well
the low cost one often has other tricks up their sleeve for making
money, either by adding your domain to their parked pool (above) or in
this case, they offer “free” URL forwarding for your domain, and then
sell pop-up or pop-under advertisements on your domain. You know, those
things people like so much.
