Avoiding the High Cost of Domain Hijacking

Recently, one Internet pioneer had dozens of domains hijacked, while another domain investor successfully helped law enforcement make its first ever arrest in a domain hijacking case after an extensive two-year effort involving several experts.

So, what is domain hijacking and what does it have to do with you? As the term implies, domain hijacking is when a domain is moved to another registrar without the permission of its owner. Imagine trying to load your small business website, only to find that your domain is now resolving to someone else’s property. Not only would you lose out on online revenues, it could damage to your brand as hijackers can take over that domain’s email or build an identical website to phish private information from your customers including logins and passwords. Reclaiming a hijacked website can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees that many small business owners may be unable to justify, and in some cases recovery may not be possible.

How Hijacking is Done

The most common tactic used by hijackers is to steal personal information about the actual domain owner so they can login as the owner and modify registration information or transfer the domain to another registrar. Once this has been done, the hijacker has full control of the domain and can use it or sell it to a third party.

How to Prevent Domain Hijacking

In an article for CircleID, domain attorney Brett Lewis lists seven simple rules for prevention including selecting a reputable registrar, maintaining accurate contact information with them and keeping your usernames and passwords secure.

At Dotster we provide several services, some free, others low-cost that can help protect you from domain hijacking:

1)       Automatic renewal: unless you specify otherwise, all new registrations are set for automatic renewal to prevent your domain name from accidentally expiring.

2)       Whois Privacy: for a small annual fee, Dotster’s contact information can be listed in the Whois database rather than yours, masking your identity to would-be hijackers and spammers. And unlike other private registration services, you retain complete ownership and management of your domain.

3)       Ownership Transfer is a free service that ensures you always have the correct domain owner listed in the Dotster Account Management area.

4)       TransferLock is a free service that prevents unauthorized transfers of your domain names to other registrars unless you login to your account and unlock your domains. Sign up by logging into your Dotster account.

5)       NameSafe offers the ultimate in domain name security, preventing account ownership updates, name server updates, contact updates, moving domains between accounts and registrar transfers without authorization from the account owner through email. Domains using NameSafe will be under locked status with the registry. Sign up for this product through the domain registration process or by logging into your Dotster account.

Together, these tips and services are meant to safeguard your domain investment and online business. However, as nothing in technology is 100% hack-proof, we also have helped customers with transfer disputes in the past.

Do you have thoughts on domain hijacking? Please share them in the comments section.