Secure Your Domain Names… Like, Yesterday

One of the identifying marks of a car dealership absent of any serious Internet Marketing personnel is a domain name(s) WHOIS with old, outdated information. This shouldn’t be a big deal to any business but in many small companies it often is. Here’s a timeline that shows why:

•  1998. 1998 was a big year for dealers getting their first websites, because that’s when Reynolds realized it had some value and pushed it on all their uninterested dealers. “The guy who knows about computers” in the company is asked to buy the domain. Naturally, he uses his own personal data to fill out the WHOIS, because he doesn’t have a corporate email address, and there’s no one else’s name to put on the thing besides his own. Maybe he buys a five-year term… maybe 10. No one cares about the site so it really doesn’t matter to him.
• 2003. If they’re lucky, ”the guy who knows about computers” still works at the dealership, so he’s around for that domain renewal email that comes to his personal inbox. If he’s not around anymore, hopefully someone else there has some clue as to what’s going on and takes it upon him/herself to renew the domain. Of course, he/she doesn’t change the WHOIS, because he/she doesn’t want to get involved in this mess. So whether the original domain lease term was 5 or 10 years, it’s still going to have the original guy’s WHOIS info when 2008 rolls around.
• 2008. Speak of the devil. Here we are, and ”the guy who knows about computers” has been fired, and his replacement has been fired, and that guy’s replacement has been fired. Now the dealership’s domain is up for renewal and the notice is going to an email address that a) is totally unrelated to the dealer, and b) probably doesn’t even exist anymore, given the rate people change their email addresses. If the dealer’s lucky, they get something in the mail to remind them… of course, then it becomes a madhouse as a handful of computer-illiterate alarmists try to figure out how the hell to keep this thing from expiring. Maybe it does expire… and someone like me picks it up and blackmails you for it to the tune of $5,000. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Are you seeing how much confusion is being created here? When I go in to consult with a dealer, the WHOIS info on their domain names is one of the first elements I look into. Changing all that data over to an administrative setup is excrutiating for people like me - and excrutiating for me means expensive for you. This stuff is your virtual real estate. It’s pathetically cheap to maintain, but it’s as valuable as your business name. In a few years, it may even be as valuable as your physical real estate… so take a moment to get your house in order here.

Step 1. Find out what your WHOIS info says. You can visit any domain registrar like Network Solutions or GoDaddy, find the WHOIS section, and enter your dealership’s domain name. Most of the time it will spit out the name of the business, address, and administrative contact information. The most important element by far is the email address listed under the administrative contact. The person with access to that email address can do whatever they want with this domain name.

Step 2a. If this is an active email address in your company, get access to it, and set up a mail rule on it that will forward copies of received mail to several administrative personnel (you, the CFO, the I.T. Manager if you have one, etc.). Go into your domain administration using this email and change out any personal or outdated info. Change the renewal method on the domain to auto-renew, and if you can, enter a corporate credit card into the database so the domain can renew itself without you having to lift a finger.

Step 2b. If you have no clue where this email address goes, send an email to it. If you get nothing back, you’re what we like to call S.O.L. - you now have to contact your domain registrar and request a Change Of Administrative Contact fax form. You’re going to need to prove that this old email address is no longer relevant to your business and that you deserve to be given access… and you prove that by sending in a fax form on letterhead with your driver’s license. Obviously, make sure the right person at your dealership is doing this. Once you are granted access to the domain, go back and do Step 2a. That’s it, you’re done forever… problem solved. Well, unless you have a few dozen domain names…