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.Law verification process to be simplified

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Change will make it easier for registrars to onboard top level domain.

The process for registering .law and .abogado (Spanish for attorney) domain names is about to get easier.

Registrants will still need to be a lawyer, law firm, court, law school or local regulator, but this information will be checked through standard Whois field rather than additional registration fields. This will make it easier for domain registrars to offer the domains without additional integration and development work.

.Law registry MMX provided these details to DNW:

MMX’s verification method has been simplified for both registrants and registrars allowing for standard Whois data fields to be used in verifying eligibility.  More specifically, the changes eliminate specific data fields required for registering a .law domain which also reduces any related development work for registrars to onboard .law.

.law’s purpose remains consistent in promoting trust within the legal profession by allowing qualified lawyers, law firms, courts of law, law schools and legal regulators to register a name.  MMX will continue to verify registrants to ensure adherence to its eligibility policy and protect the integrity of .law domain names.

The use of standard Whois data fields is effective on January 7th, 2019.

We are now working with several registrars to onboard .law and expect to see registration growth in 2019.

If you want additional information on .law eligibility requirements you can go to http://nic.law/eligibilitycriteria/

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Marriott’s poor choice of domain for email notification

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Company chose to send breach notice from email-marriott.com, not marriott.com, leading to poor deliverability.

A couple of weeks ago hotel giant Marriott announced a data breach that involves personal data of up to 500 million guests. This type of data breach seems par for the course these days. It’s interesting to see how companies follow up after these breaches; the response can often shed light on overall poor practices that make it clear that a breach was inevitable.

Consider the Equifax breach in which the company’s own social media account tweeted out a link to the wrong domain name with information about the incident.

After the news about Marriott broke, I waited to get an email from Marriott that would notify me of what happened and how to protect myself. It never came…until I checked my spam folder. Gmail had marked two emails from Marriott about the breach as spam.

As Spamhaus notes, this is likely because Marriott sent the emails from email-marriott.com, not marriott.com. email-marriott.com doesn’t have the same domain reputation as marriott.com so email providers don’t give it the same trust level.

Domain name reputation is important when it comes to email deliverability. A domain that’s not well-known and suddenly sends hundreds of millions of emails is suspicious.

Email-marriott.com is also suspicious to humans; many phishing domains have a format similar to this. Add to this the propensity of people to misspell Marriott (is it two r’s or two t’s — oh, it’s both) and you have a mess on your hands. Thankfully, some security experts registered the typos.

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A new TLD launched today: .Fan

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Donuts launches .Fan top level domain.

Remember when I used to write about the long list of top level domains launching each week? Those days are over, but one did launch today with little FANfare (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Donuts launched .Fan today in general availability. This domain has an interesting history; Rightside sold rights to the domain and then Donuts (which later bought Rightside) acquired it when the .fan registry failed.

It appears that 50 or so .fan domains were registered during early access. The zone file had 352 names in it as of yesterday.

.Fan domains are available at most registrars that carry Donuts’ domain names. Prices are generally in the $35-$45 range.

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Your December Domainer Checklist

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Here are 8 things to do before the end of the year.

I have my annual end-of-year meeting with my accountant today and it has me thinking about what I need to complete before the end of the year. Here are 8 things domain investors should do this month.

1. Plan for taxes – This is the first year of the new tax code for U.S. residents. It’s really hard to figure out if the new code will be helpful or hurtful and it depends on your unique situation. On the one hand, rates are lower and there’s a new 20% deduction for qualified business income. On the other hand, state tax deductions are capped and a handful of other changes might impact your taxes. At a minimum, run a preliminary income statement to ballpark your tax bill.

2. Schedule your Q4 estimated tax payment – U.S. residents need to make their Q4 payment on January 15, 2019. Make sure you have the cash in the bank.

3. Renew, renew, renew – Depending on the tax regime where you live and your accounting method, now is a great time to pull expenses forward by renewing domain names that expire in the next six months. Or push them off to next year if you expect higher income in 2019.

4. Buy a new computer and other assets – Again, this depends on your country. In the U.S., now is a great time to buy any assets for your business so you can take the Section 179 depreciation this year.

5. Close out sales – If you’re currently negotiating to buy or sell domain names, timing at the end of the year is key. You can delay a big sale until 2019 if your tax bill is already higher-than-usual in 2018, or close on it now if you’re falling into a lower-than-usual tax bracket. You can also use timing to your advantage when negotiating with people who also want to get a transaction done on either side of January 1.

6. Get your portfolio in order – There are some great tools for organizing your portfolio and staying on top of expirations. My favorite is Watch My Domains Pro.

7. Review automatic subscriptions – Companies love subscription services because people often renew them even if they aren’t using them anymore. Now is a great time to check all of your subscription services and decide which ones to keep in 2019.

8. Review your strategy – Use downtime over the holidays to review your results in 2018 and set a strategy for the start of 2019. What worked? What didn’t?

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Last month’s top DNW stories

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Verisign and the Gab controversy were top stories last month.

Last month’s headlines were dominated by news related to the U.S. government extending the Cooperative Agreement with Verisign. Let’s start by reviewing the top five posts on DNW in November, ranked by views:

1. Who wins, who loses from Trump Admin decision on domain names – You’re going to see a common theme emerge among the top stories. In this post, I reviewed the winners and losers from the decision to let Verisign increase prices on .com domain names.

2. Holy sh!t…Verisign just called out “Domain Scalpers” and its biggest customers – Just a day after getting U.S. approval to raise prices, Verisign threw domain investors under the bus.

3. U.S. Gov Grants Verisign .Com Price Hikes – If you don’t know the background for the first two stories, read this one.

4. Pennsylvania Attorney General subpoenas Epik over Gab.com domain name – Epik decided to accept Gab.com at its registrar and was repaid with a subpoena.

5. Domains suggest which cities might get XFL football teams – Domain names tipped off which cities were in the running for football teams.

I also had some great podcast interviews last month. Click the links to listen, or download them on your podcast app:

#209 – Going Global with Rolf Larsen

#210 – Brewing up Brew.com

#211 – 48 domains, $114k sales on $3400 investment

#212 – All about naming with Eli Altman

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