Domain Theft Protection and Locking

By: Team (Support)   Posted on: January 1, 2012

Domain hijacking or domain theft is the process by which registration of a currently registered domain name is transferred without the permission of its original registrant, generally by exploiting a vulnerability in the domain name registration system.

Before a domain name can be transferred from one registrar to another the permission of the registrant must be obtained. This normally happens by email and is authenticated by the email address. But contact information can be old or inaccurate leading to errors. This means that there may be situations where a transfer may be approved by an unauthorised person. As transfer communications are invariably by email, things can go wrong if the authorised person does not receive the email.

Eventhough ICANN imposes a 60-day waiting period between a change in registration information and a transfer to another registrar; this is intended to make domain hijacking more difficult, since a transferred domain is much more difficult to reclaim, and it is more likely that the original registrant will discover the change in that period and alert the registrar.

Read this story, you may get a picture about this menace. http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2009/dailyposts/20090721.htm
http://secretgeek.net/sg_hijack_1.asp

Domain Theft Protection This feature helps ensure that your domain name remains safe from illegal domain name transfers. By locking your domain name you can have additional peace of mind that your domain name will not be transferred another registrar or redirected to another server without your permission, Request for this domain name to another Registrar to fail at the Registry itself.

You get a facility in your control panel to Disable this feature when you wish to genuinely initiate the process to transfer away your domain to another registrar. This feature is not available for the following TLDs (domain name extensions) on account of restrictions imposed by the Registry: .EU, .UK, .NZ, .WEB.IN

Domain Locking Apart from enabling Theft protection for a domain name, you may also place a Lock on it. Domain locking is a free security enhancement offered by Web Circuit India to prevent unauthorized transfers of your domain to another registrar or web host by "locking" your domain name servers. When your domain is locked, you'll be substantially protected from unauthorized third parties who might try to misdirect your name servers or transfer your domain without your permission. You will also be unable to inadvertently make changes to your name servers that could prevent Web Circuit India from hosting your domain services properly.

To make changes to your domain name servers, you will need to sign in to the Domain Control Panel and turn off domain locking. (We recommend turning locking off only in the event that you need to make such changes.). When you place a Lock on a domain name, all actions available for domain names may still be performed by only you or Web Circuit India.

Types of Actions possible from the Order Details view are Contact Details modification, Name Servers modification, Child Name Servers modification, Theft Protection, Suspension/Unsuspension, Internal Move/Push/Transfer to another Customer Account, etc.

The Lock feature is not supported for domain names under the following extensions, due to restrictions imposed by the Registry or other restrictions: .EU, .UK, .NZ, and .WEB.IN

Please read our KB article to perform Domain Theft Protection and Locking for your domain

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