Recently, a new client came to us to redesign their website. However, when we investigated the domain name registration, we found that he was not the rightful owner of his domain – his previous web designer was! This is because their web designer`s name has been listed as the official «holder» along with the domain name. Our client was shocked, but unfortunately, this is a situation we have experienced many times before. The first is to contact the owner by email and communicate your interest in buying the domain name or business. Two business owners enter a Ferrari dealership. The most common problem we see is when employees register domains for an organization and later leave. The domain often ends up in an account that no one has access to, and if the account login email no longer exists, no one can receive the account password reset emails and no one is notified of domain renewal issues until the website or email stops working. In cases where the owner has purchased the domain as an investment, it will be easy for you to contact them. So start by going to the website to see what is displayed. For most domain name types, you can check the contacts listed with a WHOIS lookup (note that for some ccTLDs, the registry will not display this information and will not appear if you have set up a WHOIS privacy service, if any, so you will need to log in to your iwantmyname account to view contact information). This means that if you are the registrant contact for a domain, you are the rightful owner of the domain. These people are not: you can directly say that the domain is for sale, and include contact information or a form that you can fill out.
In some cases where the domain is actively used, you can find the contact information on the Contact page or About the website. Whenever someone registers a domain name, the domain registrar handling the sale must collect basic contact information. In some cases, this information is then transmitted to the WHOIS directory so that it records who manages each website online. This means that in many cases, you won`t be able to directly find out who the owner is via the directory. However, they can know who they registered the domain with. Unless you`re a Fortune 500 company, your website contract should be pretty simple. If this sounds more like a John Grisham novel than a website contract, I recommend spending some extra money to have a lawyer who has the jargon to you. Then, when that employee leaves, you won`t suddenly wake up to the fact that there`s a problem if the website goes down and the emails stop working. Because domain renewal couldn`t be billed via a deactivated credit card and expired months ago.
These situations are tricky and we need a lot of authentication and proof before granting anyone access to the domain. However, it is more likely that we will tell these individuals to seek and/or develop legal advice among themselves or to use the UDRP procedure (see below) because we are not in a position to decide who is entitled to a domain name. Which business owner actually (and immediately) owns their Ferrari? Most people never think about domain ownership again after registration. It`s one of those things that might come to mind or get you to sign up once a year, but as we see quite regularly, things can get tricky or downright controversial pretty quickly. The worst? There`s nothing you can do about it because you`ve technically signed the property rights to your website in the fine print of the contract. In the second step, contact the domain owner directly if possible. Or with a domain name broker that handles the negotiation and transfer process. There are services like Sedo or flippa that manage the whole process. If the website you are interested in is not actively used and updated, the owner may be happy to hear from an interested buyer. And even if the owner is clearly using the domain name right now, if you`re willing to spend enough to make a sale that`s worth it for them, you can still have a chance. If any of the above steps lead you to the website owner, it`s time to contact us! Create an email informing you that you are interested in purchasing the domain. For domain owner information that has been hidden by domain privacy.
You can contact us via the contact form on the website. If there is no website yet, you can try contacting the specified privacy email, which ends with contactprivacy.com if things get ugly and legal, the assets can be frozen. And if we receive conflicting information about an account or domain, we may be forced to block it until the issue is resolved. This means that no one can access the account or domain – to shut down or restart a website, to pay for a renewal, or some other feature.