Rules mandate practices to protect domain name registrants.
The new “Expired Registration Recovery Policy” (ERRP) goes into effect August 31.
This policy sets guidelines for how registrars treat expired domain names and how they must notify customers that their domains are expiring.
Most notably, the rules will require expiration notices be sent at particular intervals and mandate that DNS resolution be interrupted after expiration.
Domain registrars will be required to send an expiration notice about one month before expiration and another one a week before expiration. A notice is also generally required five days after expiration.
Registrars must also interrupt the DNS of an expired domain for a specific timeframe. This is common practice today — a registrar will change the nameservers to point to a parked page with a notice about how to renew the domain. This disruption quickly gets the attention of the registrant if they didn’t know their domain was expiring.
ERRP also requires a 30 day redemption grace period on non-sponsored gTLDs and requires registrars to publish pricing and information about recovering a domain during this period.
The new rules include some suggest best practices. One is that registrars keep a customer email address on file that is not connected to the registered URL so that email can still be received when the DNS is disrupted.
That’s progress, but it should be a requirement that registrars keep a customer email address on file that is not connected to the registered URL so that email can still be received when the DNS is disrupted.
Hope it sorts out domain crooks like Moniker who sell your domain day 35-42 after expiry to snapnames / their pals and deny redemption.
Rog, how is someone a “crook” for selling your expired domain after a month? If you read the new policy you have to offer 30 day redemption grace period.
@Josh, they have gone half way with that, making it a suggested best practice to keep a non-connected email address on record in order to be able to notify registrant of expiration.
How about actually letting the names drop instead of letting the big registrars grab everything. Many just stay in-house and are resold out the back door.
It’s about time. The lack of a cohesive policy on this was very confusing and created hidden traps for consumers. We were disabling the DNS 10 years ago when I was at Register.com, but I have had clients lose names where the registrars didn’t disable the DNS and didn’t offer a redemption period. This is much better.
Simply put we will have less bullshit to deal with.
Thank you @DomainNameWire for the sweet news.
@Rog –
I had a similar devastating and costly experience with Moniker and am very interested in discussing with you. My experience has been that Moniker disregards their own stated Domain Life Cycle when the domains are valuable ones, looking to auction them off at SnapNames before customers have a chance to redeem them during their own stated redemption period.
Please email me at my above stated name @gmail.com. Thanks!!
Actually, I’d love to hear from anyone else who has had a name sold out from under them when they were still supposed to be able to redeem it as a result of Moniker being in bed with SnapNames!!