Privacy & Security Heat Generates Little Light

Privacy & Security Heat Generates Little Light

Thousands of small business webmasters briefly lose their domain names at expiration, due to a simple lack of understanding about the roles of three key players in the drama: domain name registrars, web hosts and internet service providers. Fortunately for most, they learn quickly how to save their web site from oblivion by using the 30 day redemption period for expired domain names enforced by ICANN. One simple solution is to extend domain registration for the maximum ten years. The other solution is to treat domain registrar data as the critical business element it is.

I Can't Remember Where I Purchased My Domain Name!

It wasn't until my third client had called asking how to regain control of her domain name that I realized that it was a common problem for small business webmasters to forget where they had registered their domains. WHOIS my registrar? Why didn't I get an email about renewal? Why did my site stop working today?

People rarely realize how important it is to keep their domain registrar notified of changes to their email address and and other contact information. The registrar will send renewal notifications to the email address last on file. For most domain owners, the only time they think about contacting a registrar is the day they reserve their domain name. If they move to a new city and get a new internet service provider, it doesn't occur to them that the old email address will change and that meeans that the registrar can no longer contact them through the previous address, or phone or fax as each of them change and we rarely notify the controller of our domain of those changes.

Sometimes the first indication a business owner will have that there is a problem is the day their web site stops working. If they failed to notify their domain registrar of changed email address, they may never have received their domain renewal notice. Since many registrars honor a 30 day "redemption period" allowing expired domains to be redeemed, it may be possible to save the registration within 30 days following expiration by contacting registrars during 30 day domain redemption periods.

The following URL leads to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (AKA ICANN) discussing the grace period and redemption period rules it enforces.

http://www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm

You may remember when you signed up for a Yahoo ID and were asked by them if you wished to receive any "Special Offers & Marketing Communications." Yahoo recently revised their privacy policy. As a result, and regardless if you chose to receive any of these "Special Offers" or not when you signed up for your Yahoo ID, Yahoo have set every single person who has a Yahoo ID (and those that have more than one) to "Yes" in these preferences. This means that you may well be inundated with even more junk mail than you are already receiving.

In order to change your settings back to whatever you had them at before, you will need to log in to your account and physically change them.

Login at the following URL - you will be prompted for your Yahoo ID and password:

http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile

The middle segment within the Member Information (email addresses) section has a link to: Edit your marketing references. Click on this link and you will see all of your settings were changed to "Yes." Meaning of course that you will receive all kinds of "offers" from Yahoo and their "partners."

Unless you wish to receive even more junk mail than you are already getting, you may wish to go through the entire page and choose whether to receive such notices. Also, right at the bottom of the page are other ways you could be notified - by phone or postal mail. Unless you wish to receive unsolicited phone calls and paper junk mail, you will need to change these settings to "No" also.

Once you have finished your selections, make sure you click on the Save Changes button right at the bottom of the page.

Yahoo is supposedly sending out notices to all its users regarding this particular change. However, it is estimated it will take several weeks for everyone to receive their notification.