There are reports that ICANN is now taking websites offline because of failures to verify ones’ email address. A popular website, JitBit.com, was recently taken offline because they failed to verify the site’s email address as listed in the whois record.
According to Jitbit.com, their website was offline for nearly 30 minutes, and showed the following:
I’ve written before about the ICANN email verification requirements that went into effect in January of this year. If you own a domain name, you absolutely must verify your email address with your registrar. If you don’t, after 15 days your website will most likely be taken offline (go down).
So, if you get one of those emails, then do NOT ignore them. Just verify the email address, and your website won’t go down.
Also, if you aren’t getting any of the email verification notices from your registrar, then you need to log into your registrar and have these emails resent to your email so you can verify it. I know personally that if you log into GoDaddy they have a notice there that says that your email wasn’t verified if it in fact hasn’t been verified.
In the new ICANN agreement, the WHOIS Accuracy Program Specification has been updated. Not only are registrars required to verify the whois data, section 1 (f) outlines the new requirements for email or phone verification:
Verify:
i. the email address of the Registered Name Holder (and, if different, the Account Holder) by sending an email requiring an affirmative response through a tool-based authentication method such as providing a unique code that must be returned in a manner designated by the Registrar, orii. the telephone number of the Registered Name Holder (and, if different, the Account Holder) by either (A) calling or sending an SMS to the Registered Name Holder’s telephone number providing a unique code that must be returned in a manner designated by the Registrar, or (B) calling the Registered Name Holder’s telephone number and requiring the Registered Name Holder to provide a unique code that was sent to the Registered Name Holder via web, email or postal mail.
In either case, if Registrar does not receive an affirmative response from the Registered Name Holder, Registrar shall either verify the applicable contact information manually or suspend the registration, until such time as Registrar has verified the applicable contact information. If Registrar does not receive an affirmative response from the Account Holder), Registrar shall verify the applicable contact information manually, but is not required to suspend any registration.
Jitbit.com is not the only website that this is happening to. If fact, if you search Google for:
intitle:”registrant whois contact information verification”
You’ll see that there are plenty of other websites being taken offline because of a lack of verification. Last time I checked this Google was showing about 119,000 search results. You can also see a lot of results if you search for this query in Google, as well:
intitle:”registrant whois contact information verification”
In the case of Jitbit.com, they apparently had moved their domain name and claim that the whois record was changed so that the email was listed as [email protected] Honestly if that was the case (which it most likely was), NameCheap should be able to query their customer data and make these changes. Then send out the verification emails to everyone who has not verified their email.