Keep control of your domain name

By James Pilcher
Cincinnati Enquirer

If the Web is the front door to your small business or home business, losing control of your Internet domain name can be catastrophic.

A domain name is the name of a Web site or the part of an e-mail address that comes after the "@" sign. It's the part of the Web address (or URL) that comes after the "www." part.

"It's amazing how many businesses don't equate the domain name with the Web site name or their business name," says Aaron Larkins, president of Profitability.net in Cincinnati, which helps companies set up Web sites along with domains and domain names. "It's as much of a brand as anything else. And some people just let it slip away, not knowing how important it is."

No statistics are available, but Larkins and other experts in the field say they see a fairly constant stream of businesses letting their domain name registries lapse. That omission, in turn, can lead to breakdowns of their Web sites or their e-mail systems.

Just look at some of the names that have had this happen in the past couple of years:

• Online auction site eBay briefly lost control of its German site www.eBay.de last September when hackers apparently got control of its domain name.

• In January, New York-based Internet service provider Panix, host to scores of business Web sites and e-mail systems, lost control of its own domain, with all the Web traffic being directed to a company in Australia and e-mail going to another firm in England. It took more than 24 hours to straighten out the situation.

As in the case of eBay, losing control can be the result of a malicious act. Panix's case is still under investigation — and foul play is suspected.

But in most cases, the loss of name is simply an oversight in sending in the paperwork.

Renewing a registration costs only about $6 a year, and that can include an optional lock that will prevent anyone else from gaining control if the renewal notice happens to "get lost in the mail."