{"id":983,"date":"2011-09-29T05:37:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T11:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/?p=983"},"modified":"2011-09-29T05:37:09","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T11:37:09","slug":"a-new-domain-xxx-and-what-it-could-mean-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/?p=983","title":{"rendered":"A new domain, XXX, and what it could mean to you."},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks for the fabulous folks at SouthwestCyberPort<\/a> (my ISP) for alerting us to this new domain name:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To: SWCP Customers
\nFrom: SWCP Tech Support
\nSubject: [SWCP] Some important information about Domain Names <\/p>\n

Greetings. We have a few domain name issues to tell you about. It’s a little
\nlong, so here is an Executive Summary:<\/p>\n

1. .xxx domains are launching. If you have a trademark you can block people
\n from registering your name as a .xxx domain. But only until Oct 7, 2011.<\/p>\n

2. Beware fake “renewal invoices” trying to get you to transfer your domain
\n to another registrar, especially “DROA”.<\/p>\n

3. If you have domains registered with other registrars, transfer them to SWCP
\n to get free renewal tracking and WHOIS privacy.<\/p>\n

The longer version:<\/p>\n

First, the new “.xxx” domain registry is being launched this fall. It’s
\nunique among domain registries, and we’ve received several questions about it.
\nThe biggest difference from other domains is that a trademark holder may
\npurchase a “blocking” registration. That prevents anyone from registering
\ntheir trademark in the .xxx domain (without having to register the domain
\nyourself and pay yearly for a domain you don’t want to use).<\/p>\n

The window for blocking registrations closes on October 7, 2011. If you have
\na trademark and want to block it, we can help you do it. The cost is $240
\none-time and is a “permanent” block. We have more details in a blog posting
\non our web site:
\nhttp:\/\/www.swcp.com\/2011\/why-you-should-care-about-xxx-domains\/<\/p>\n

Second is, “beware domain scammers”. We see several different flavors of
\nunethical behavior around domain registrations. The most common involve
\ntrying to get you to register domains you don’t want, or trying to get you to
\ntransfer your domain to a different registrar, under the guise of an annual
\nrenewal. To call out one company by name, “Domain Registry of America” sends
\npeople transfer requests which are made up to look like a domain renewal
\nnotice. They prey on people who are too busy to check the details. They
\nrespond to the “invoice”, which triggers a transfer of the domain to DROA.
\nDROA does actually provide domain registration service, so it’s not a complete
\nscam. But they charge an inflated price and acquire their customers under
\nfalse pretenses, which adds up to a scam in our book.<\/p>\n

Another common scam email we see is a notice that someone else is trying to
\nregister a domain with your company name in another country. The other
\ncountry is almost always China. For example if you own company.com, they tell
\nyou someone is registering company.com.cn and implore you to register it
\nbefore they get it first. We have also seen the same scam regarding the “.us”
\ndomain.<\/p>\n

And finally, a note about domain renewals with non-SWCP registrars. SWCP
\npartners with OpenSRS\/Tucows for domain registrations. We have been using
\nOpenSRS for over 10 years. Our combined system includes robust renewal
\ntracking. When one of our customer domains comes up for renewal, we email
\nthem about 6 weeks in advance to notify them, with weekly reminders. If we
\ndon’t get any response, we will contact them by phone. We do everything in
\nour power to make sure they know their domain is in danger of lapsing.<\/p>\n

Most other registrars rely only on email notifications. About once a month,
\nwe encounter a customer whose domain has expired by mistake. Usually they
\ncan recover the domain the same day, but in some cases it takes longer. If
\nthe domain owner doesn’t notice for a long period of time, the domain can even
\nbe lost altogether (there are “domain squatters” who troll the daily lists of
\nexpiring domains to snap up domains they think might be valuable either as
\ndomains, or to hold for ransom).<\/p>\n

If you would like to transfer your domain from another registrar to SWCP, just
\nlet us know (email help@swcp.com). The transfer costs $20, and extends the
\ncurrent registration period by one year. If you aren’t sure where your
\ndomain is registered, you can check at our domain tracking web page here:
\nhttps:\/\/members.swcp.com\/domains\/<\/p>\n

Log in with your SWCP username and password. We list all of the domains we
\nprovide any services for. If the Expiration Date of a domain is listed as
\n“UNKNOWN”, that means the domain is registered with another registrar. If the
\nExpiration Date is shown, that means the domain is already with SWCP\/OpenSRS
\nand is in our renewal tracking system.<\/p>\n

Or feel free to ask us by email and we will check the status of your domains
\nan report back. We can also tell you who the current registrar is for each
\ndomain.<\/p>\n

Oh, one more benefit to using SWCP\/OpenSRS as your registrar: Free WHOIS
\nPrivacy. If you would like us to enable “WHOIS Privacy” on your domain, just
\nlet us know. This removes your personal information from the public WHOIS
\nrecords, which can reduce the amount of spam you receive.<\/p>\n

If you have any questions about any of this, please contact us by phone or
\nemail.<\/p>\n

—
\nMark Costlow
\nhelp@swcp.com
\n—<\/p>\n

So why the concern? Imagine you are running for office, or running a business and someone bought yourname.xxx (fill in your name) and was able to post anything they wanted on it. Coming that with Photoshop and viola, you’ve got a bad combo for having your brand “hijacked”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks for the fabulous folks at SouthwestCyberPort (my ISP) for alerting us to this new domain name: To: SWCP Customers From: SWCP Tech Support Subject: [SWCP] Some important information about Domain Names Greetings. We have a few domain name issues to tell you about. It’s a little long, so here is an Executive Summary: 1. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,33,53,43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.canteraconsultants.com\/tech\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}