If you own a domain name for a website or blog, you’re probably familiar with the emails that your domain registrar sends out every year asking you to verify the contact information for your domain.
Up until now you could simply ignore those emails and nothing drastic would happen, but not anymore. Ignoring those emails will now result in your domain being suspended by the registrar!
New regulations just announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) specify that your domain registrar must suspend your domain if you fail to respond to a verification email within 15 calendar days. The suspension will remain in place indefinitely until you verify the information.
The new rules also specify that domain registrars must verify a domain’s contact information any time changes are made to a domain (address or phone number change, etc.) within 15 days.
What’s more, when the registrar detects a change in a domain’s contact info, they must try to verify the registered phone number and email address. If either of them fail, the domain will be immediately suspended until the bad phone number and/or email address is fixed – no 15 day grace period will apply.
Bottom line: You can no longer safely ignore those irritating emails asking you to verify the contact information for your domain because it WILL be suspended after 15 days, and it will remain suspended until you comply.