Your domain name is a valuable asset of your company. With your domain name, you establish a presence on the web where customers, staff, and interested individuals can find you and the information you place on your website. If you lost your domain name, you could potentially lose money from purchases, future and current clients, and your very presence on the web.
Registration Scams
You may receive an official-looking letter via postal mail or email, reminding you to renew your domain name. It looks official enough; there is an Amount Due box and the domain listed is one of your domains. It’s easy to fall prey to this scam, send in your money, and inadvertently transfer your domain to one of these unscrupulous companies. They now have your domain and may put up a fight before giving control back to you.
Always carefully read renewal notices, or call us to verify the validity of a notice. Verify which company it’s coming from to see if that’s who you registered your domain name with. If you receive a renewal notice from a registrar that you’re not registered with and have never heard of, tear it up and toss it in the garbage.
Vivid Image manages domains for a number of our clients. As part of our service to you, we monitor your domain name, remind you when it’s time to renew, and process the renewal for you. If you’re not sure who’s managing your domain or if a renewal notice is valid, please contact us to clear it up.
Imaginary Competitors
Another scam that unscrupulous companies may try to hit you with is pretending there is a third party interested in buying domain names related to your trademark, such as domains with different extensions, such as .net, .org, .us, and so forth. In reality, there is no third party looking to buy these domains and the companies are trying to scare you into buying those domains from them. Don’t fall for it.
If you’re interested in purchasing additional domain names, contact us or go to your current registrar. Don’t automatically trust companies that contact you out of the blue.
Contact Information
Since October 2003, registrars are required to contact domain owners once a year to verify that their contact information is correct. These are valid emails.
It is important to keep your contact information up to date. Should you ever run into a problem with your domain, you will want to be able to prove that it belongs to you. Problems could be as simple as forgetting your password and no longer having the email address that’s listed on the account.
If you receive a notice to verify your contact information, please take a minute to look at the information that’s listed on your domain and make sure it’s correct.
Conclusion
Protecting your company assets is important and that includes your domain name. Know who your domain name is registered with and who manages it. Vivid Image will purchase, renew, and manage your domain names for you, but doesn’t own them. They are yours and we will not attempt to hold on to them if you decide to manage them yourself.
If you have any questions about your domain name, give us a call.
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