Which E-mail in Whois?

[ObtainADomain]

My Administrative Contact for all my domains (and every other service I used online like paypal, ebay, etc.) was at Altavista.

It was a nightmare when I found out they had eliminated their email service. Even now, a year later, I still have problems with some services I had previously joined.

Be smart, use email connected to your Domain. Try your best to build a UDRP proof website at that domain so that you will be able to keep it.

Regards,

ObtainADomain

 

[William9]

ObtainADomain indicated:

“…at Altavista …It was a nightmare…still have problems…
Be smart, use email connected to your Domain. Try your best to build a UDRP proof website at that domain so that you will be able to keep it.”

Thank you so much for sharing your experience ObtainADomain. Your situation was more than a theoretical risk, it was a nighmare.

I am taking your advice shortly. Thank you.

 

[consumernet]

x

 

[Anthony Ng]

First of all, NEVER use a HoTMaiL (or Yahoo, or whatever free or web-based) address for anything serious. That's the first rule. Frankly, I never take people with a HoTMaiL address very seriously. If you are running a business and tell people that your e-mail address is something like "[email protected]", it's just a joke.

Secondly, as someone has already pointed out, HoTMail in particular is bad because it automatically expires over a period of inactivity. I have actually retrieved the Administrative Contact for one of my clients in this way. This guy signed up a domain name with a HoTMail address a year ago and has since stopped using it. When he switches host and need to update nameservers, he is not able to do so without a password which he forgot. And without the HoTMail address (of the Administrative Contact), he's not able to retrieve the password! I simply re-sign up that expired HoTMail address for him and retrieve everything. But it could have been somebody else ...

The going under of @Home Network has quite an impact that is really far-reaching. I have numerous clients who need to update their whois info AFTER their @home.com e-mail died. And I still see some Administrative Contact with an @home.com e-mail once in a while. But this is a rare exception. In most cases, sticking to a big, national ISP is the safest way. Many hosting companies are smaller in scale and therefore more vulnerable to bankruptcy and merger.

Last but not least, NEVER use an e-mail from that particular domain for your Administrative Contact. You'll be amazed how many silly people are out there!

 

[Silverwire]

When Mail.com opened up, I thought I was so wicked by getting the perfect address I wanted, and for my wife, and my 1 and 4 yr olds (at the time). How could a name as strong as mail.com go out of business? At worst they'd start charging, right? Well, about a year later, when all my important stuff was going there, they started losing mail AND ALL MY SAVED FILES! Promise after promise (about 12 of them) from customer service was broken that my files were absolutely safe and would be restored VERY soon, and it was just some minor migration problems. About 4 or 5 months later they finally admitted defeat and I was SOL. During the same time the company was being purchased by net2phone and nobody at gave a Sh*t. I mean seriously, I attempted to phone corporate numerous times, it was just not possible. No cust service, no manager, no executive to take responsibility.

After that, I switched to hotmail for my personal important business for stability and technical security, and I use Outlook to store my files locally. Sure, "hotmail" sounds a little cheesey, but it is Microsoft.

I use it constantly throughut the day, so not much chance it will expire, unless I go into a coma or die.

 

[William9]

I may have just understood an additional issue related to Emails based on the posts of Jberryhill above AND his posts in another thread-
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15332, in which he stated:

…do you think that Mr. Ricks will (a) hand over whatever is stored on this server or (b) spend thousands of dollars and possibly risk contempt for not complying with a subpoena to hand them over.

Does my signature make more sense to you now?
…
Please do not send private messages via dnforum.com, email me directly.

- - - -
My understand of all this is that if a subpoena is issued to the entity where my E-mail account is stored:

(a) If it is a small entity like E-mails-R-US, I should consider that the stored E-mails will be provided with hesitation - it is cost effective for them to simply give them up,

(b) if it is a large entity that does not want bad press about it (large phone co.?), it is possible they will spend thousands of dollars (a staff attorney?) to fight the subpoena.

I do not want to seem to speak for Jberryhill, but I am thinking that the issue is something along that line.

Thanks again.

 

[DomainPairs]

My understanding is that if it is a large entity like Hotmail, you just get someone to hack into it and read all the mails. Of course this may not be admissable as evidence.

 

[mole]

There are two issues here :-

1. Breaking through your username and password into your admin panel and changing all the details, including your registrant email.

2. Having an email address fail on you

For 2, I think the best practices for maximum security are :-

1. Get a domain specifically for your registrant email address. Register it for 10 years so expiration is never an issue.
2. Host it with a realiable and established provider
3. Make sure you POP that email account everyday as you retrieve your email, even if you don't receive any mail from it. Outlook will alert you if that mail server is down, and that's one quick way to check on that domain.

A lot of domain name protection is common sense and regular housekeeping to spot for suspicious activity. If your names are very good and not developed websites, you just have to be a bit more vigillent that's all.

 

[dtobias]

Yuck... Outlook (aka Outhouse, or Lookout) sucks... get a decent mail program! I use Pegasus Mail (www.pmail.com), but the Mozilla browser (www.mozilla.org) also has a decent mail client. Every virus and "trojan-horse" program these days seems to be specifically tailored for Outlook; you'll avoid lots of grief if you use something else.