Part 3

Do You REALLY Own Your Domain?
Picture this: You finally found the ultimate domain name for your business, and you've set the site up. Things are going well, and you sleep at night, assured that your domain is safe forever (or as long as you pay the yearly registration fee). Along comes unscrupulous domain grabber Joe...he finds that the domain name he wants is already taken by you. So he checks to see if you have a copyright on the domain name. You don't, so he registers the name as a trademark. Two years pass, and then you get a note from your domain registrar saying that someone else owns the trademark for the domain you own, and they promptly pull you into a legal dispute, the outcome of which is ultimately that you have to turn the domain over to the trademark holder, Joe the domain grabber. 

Could it happen? Yes it can. But you can do something to stop it from happening--just trademark your domain before someone like "Joe" does. It'll cost you about $350, and you can do it yourself. Start by checking to see if the name is already trademarked, something you should have done even before you registered the domain name in the first place. 

Changes to Your Domain Name Registration Without Your Ack?
Imagine this: you wake up from a restful night's sleep, start to enjoy the morning coffee while you check out your web site, and--whoa, what happened to your site? Can your site be replaced by someone else's content without someone hacking into your web site? Sure, if you're like everybody else and have not changed the default security features of your domain registrar. 

When you registered your domain, you selected the method of authentication you will use when you make changes to your domain. Generally, if someone requests changes to your domain name, a note is sent to the admin and technical contacts, and once they respond, the changes are made. Two problems with this: a lot of domains are set up so that when a change request is made, the change is completed and THEN the admin and technical contacts are contacted. Worse yet is that sometimes, even when the admin and tech contacts are asked about the changes before they are made, and they reply with a NACK (no, do not make the changes), the changes are still pushed through, and the domain can be re-routed to a different DNS, pointing your prized domain to a different web site. 

To fix this problem, change the method of acknowledgment so that you are asked first, then the changes are made (or better yet, you can even set it up so that you will be required to use a password to make changes). Second, do not ignore any messages you receive asking for your ack to make changes (you'd be surprised how many people do). Third, periodically check the details that are listed in the domain database for your domain to make sure that the correct information is still listed.

  Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4