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Contact email address for your domain registration
The other day, I had a customer call me in a panic. It seemed that the administrative email address for his domain had been changed from one that he controlled to one where he had no idea who it belonged to.
He had just come back from vacation, wanted to make a change on his website and could not gain access to his domain. Needless to say, this was not the “well rested” first day back to work experience that he had in mind after a nice vacation week spent relaxing in the Caribbean!
As a result, I spent more than a few hours on the phone, during which I dealt with automated voice systems and call center people who did not have this problem on their call list of possible scenarios and responses. Ultimately, we needed to send several notarized documents to the registrar, and after significant increases in everyone’s blood pressure, we finally regained control of the domain.
Most of the obstacles from the registrar that we faced were due to the fact that they had received an acknowledgement from the “prior email address of record” that approved the change. At first we thought they were mistaken, but they provided documentation of the automated response for us. When we looked at it, it was immediately clear what had happened.
His corporate email address was the listed contact for the domain. When he had gone on vacation, like most people often do, he had set up an automatic “Out of Office” response on his email account. When the email request to approve the domain contact information came in, his email "Out of Office" automatically replied to the change request. The Registrar saw the reply as an approval and made the changes.
Another way this scenario can happen is from anti spam software from websites that send out response messages to the email address on record, either asking you to validate your address or informing you that ‘your message scored 123.45 on their spam filter score’. The automated reply sent out by your out of office settings on your email in box can also cause this to occur.
The lesson to be learned here is: Do NOT use the same email address for your day-to-day business AND for your domain registration. Domains@xxx , DNSadmin@xxx , or any email address that is not utilized on a daily basis should be used for this address of record.
A Word to the Wise