In a digital age it could be argued that your company domain name is one of your most worthwhile assets yet it’s the one thing we see clients regularly fail to take account of.  In the past year we have dealt with hundreds of domain name issues but four more notable are listed below.:

• Clients register their .UK domains to a false name and address and then Nominet cannot match the details to public sources so the domain gets suspended (not by us but by Nominet) resulting in the client needing to work with Nominet to solve the problem;
• A client registered all her .UK domains to a Limited Company.  The Limited Company was Dissolved but the domains still were legally owned by the Dissolved Company.  When Nominet’s automated system picked this up all the domains were suspended.  The client had to send a lot of paperwork to Nominet and it took days to get the domain names changed to be owned by the new Limited Company.
• A client allowed their web design agency 10 years ago to register their domain and pre paid ten years in advance.  The domain was registered in the name, address and email address of said design agency.  The domain expired and the web agency was no longer trading causing the domain to effectively be lost.
• A client registered a domain name to a hotmail.com account many years ago.  This client has since moved house and no longer uses hotmail but he did not update his domain name registration details.  This caused some hassles when he needed to move his domain name and change owner as he sold his company.

What can I do to ensure my domain name is secure?
We’ll now briefly describe some things you can do to ensure your domain name is secured to you and that you do not fall into any issues either now or ten years down the line.

•  Always ensure you register domains to the person who should own them.  If you are a web developer we do not think it is good practice for you to register domains in your name when your client has paid you for the domain as we have dealt with so many issues like this over the years;
• Check who legally owns your domain.  Use a who is tool such as whois.domaintools.com and confirm the owner – specifically check the name, address and email address.  If your web developer has registered the domain to his or her name we strongly advise you ask them to change that as what’s to say you will be using the same web developer in 5 years time.  We’ve seen this on many occasions with Yell.com registering domains in their name rather than the client and whilst Yell are reputable and have a procedure to change this it is a massive hassle to have to undertake.
• Ensure on your .UK domain that Nominet the UK controlling body for domains has been able to verify your details in their third party databases.  You do this by a simple Nominet WHO IS search here:  https://www.nominet.uk/whois/ and ensure that it says that “Data validation: Nominet was able to match the registrant’s name and address against a 3rd party data source” as part of the who is record.  If they cannot match the details you risk domain suspension and should get it changed;
• When registering a domain name ensure you register it to valid contact details. Not only is this a requirement of domain name registration rules but it also helps ensure fewer problems down the line.
• Use an email account that will be a long term email account as the email address listed with the domain.  Do not use an email address of your employer for instance in case you move jobs.  If you plan to close down an email account make sure you update your domains before you completely shut it off.

Finally no one is perfect (even us!).  In the process of writing this article we discovered a BWF Domain still registered to our Director’s Home address as a Sole Trader despite the fact we have been a Limited Company for 6 years. Therefore auditing your domain names is a good thing to do!  We’ll gladly help anyone with any questions about their domains and ensure as best we can that we help you get your domains all sorted.