Naughty registrars keep ignoring ICANN rules

ICANN has clear policies about domain name transfers. If, for example, a person’s domain has expired but it has not yet been deleted from his current registrar, he has the legitimate right to transfer that domain to another registrar at their discretion. But three major registrars, who shall remain nameless, are notorious for denying customers transfers, often citing security concerns.

ICANN has twice updated this policy to refine and issued a warning to the registrars, but they refuse to comply. If a customer has followed ICANN rules and recently updated their domain contact information, these registrars will say that the activity “looks suspicious” and deny their transfers. They claim they are protecting their clients by denying them their basic rights.

In doing so, of course, they ensure that if the clients want to renew their expired domains, they must stay with them. It is reminiscent of the dial-up wars when AOL would send out mass mailings of their free trial CDs but then make it impossibly difficult to unsubscribe from their services. Regardless of whether some illegal transfers do occur, blocking legitimate ones for the sake of security is both illegal itself and in direct violation of the standards ICANN has established.

Photo: Flickr