There’s a concerning thread over at WebHosting Talk about a user being charged ten bucks by GoDaddy for ostensibly having incorrect contact information in his domain name registration information, despite the user’s claims that all the information was correct. Someone from GoDaddy actually posted details, as well as information about the policy regarding the charges (that they only charge if incorrect information is actually found); nobody has been able to find the actual user agreement that states this, though, and the original user continues to insist that his information was correct and that GoDaddy has begun ignoring any of his attempts to contact them in an official way.

Given that there’s a new policy coming into effect tomorrow that makes it a lot easier to lose your domain names (via domain transfer requests by nefarious others) if your contact information isn’t perfectly correct, now might be a good time to hop onto your registrars’ websites and verify that everything is as it should be. Most registrars will also allow you to “lock” your registrations so that domain transfers cannot take place without you manually going to their site and reversing the lock — GoDaddy allows this, as does Register.com and even the hoary Network Solutions. When this lock is in place, no transfer request can go through at all (in theory), protecting you from illegitimate transfer requests even when you’re away from your email for more than five days.

I’m with the other Jason in saying that the new policy is supremely idiotic, if only for the incredibly short notification period that is destined to lead to some pretty major domain name losses over the coming months. (After all, it’s reasonably hard to guarantee that you see and trust every single email that’s sent to the address in your registration records, given that this email address sits out there in public and manages to attract metric tons of spam, viruses, and phishing attempts!) And in reading the actual text of the policy, it seems that there’s a window created for registrars who want to side with consumers rather than ICANN and refuse to automatically grant transfers after five days — but that’s my non-legal read of it, which I’m not so sure I’d trust. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see if any registrars become consumer-friendly in this regard.

(If you’re interested, links to the actual ICANN policy, with quotes of the relevant sections, are available in the extended version of this post.)

The new ICANN policy is the Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars, and the bit you want to look for is section A.3. This reads, in part:

As for the important bits when it comes to domain transfer locks, you’ll find that in the same section:

Number seven provides the protection of a domain lock; number six seems to be where registrars could modify their terms of service when you sign up, with an automatic opt-in clause objecting to transfers being performed in less than one or two months’ time.