Whois Name Change Trouble

Posted: 06/07/10

Resistance Is Not Futile

I registered a new domain name for a Tauranga business this afternoon, but soon afterwards I noticed I'd omitted to set the registrant (is that a proper word? It's not in the dictionary..) name correctly.

No matter, I thought, I'll just nip back into the control panel and update it, and so I did. Alas, the change was not reflected in the whois data. The registrant address had changed, but not the actual name.

Time to use the registrar's support, so I filled in the form and fired off a request. The reply came back within a few minutes - apparently this is a "no no" - not unless you fill in a change of registrant form, get it signed by the old and new registrant and fax it back to them... Apparently it's some sort of "security" feature to prevent changes if your registration account is hacked...although you can change anything else, including the registrant email address that the Unique Domain Authentication ID or UDAI code would be sent to, so the name seems completely academic since you can simply transfer to a new registrar once you have the UDAI.

Various emails flew backwards and forwards, and eventually I pointed out that a little common sense needed to be applied here. The domain had been registered and paid for less than 3 hours ago, so any alleged domain theft concerns were most unlikely and I requested they "make it so" or point me at someone who could.

30 minutes later the name was changed. It pays to argue.