November 10, 2004
New rules for domain transfers will come into effect on Friday, making it easier for people to hijack domains, according to the security and network services company Netcraft.
The new rules, set by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will mean that requests for transferring a domain will be automatically approved in five days unless they are denied by the owner of the domain.
Currently, the ownership of a domain and the nameservers allotted stay as such if a request for a transfer evokes no response.
Domain owner who do not manage their records carefully face problems under the new regime. If the contact addresses given in the records are incorrect then a request for transfer would go to a wrong address and after five days of no response, the transfer would become effective.
No reply becomes the equivalent of saying "yes" to a transfer request, according to the new ICANN policy.
"Failure by the Registrar of...
life, from my point of view :)