ICANN verification
The company I work for owns a domain that was registered by an employee that no longer works for us and we have been unable to track them down. 48 hours ago the website at the domain was replaced by an ICANN verification message. It offers two solutions - neither is possible at the moment: 1) resend a verification email - but we already tried that and monitored the mailbox for the old employee but nothing ever came so we think he might have registered it with a personal account. 2) access the portal of the registrar but since don't have credentials and we already tried the reset password link hoping again that if we monitored his old corporate email account we'd see something appear but again nothing :-( At this point we aren't sure what to do - the site is down and ICANN needs validation of who the site owners are. Does anyone have any ideas or can give us some direction? Kind Regards, Marco Belmonte
If you let people know the domain name, you might have more luck — e.g someone who works at the registrar may look into it, etc. Also, it seems surprising that this would be an **ICANN** verification message… W On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 8:48 AM, Marco Belmonte <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
The company I work for owns a domain that was registered by an employee that no longer works for us and we have been unable to track them down. 48 hours ago the website at the domain was replaced by an ICANN verification message.
It offers two solutions - neither is possible at the moment:
1) resend a verification email - but we already tried that and monitored the mailbox for the old employee but nothing ever came so we think he might have registered it with a personal account.
2) access the portal of the registrar but since don't have credentials and we already tried the reset password link hoping again that if we monitored his old corporate email account we'd see something appear but again nothing :-(
At this point we aren't sure what to do - the site is down and ICANN needs validation of who the site owners are. Does anyone have any ideas or can give us some direction?
Kind Regards,
Marco Belmonte
Because this is mandated by an ICANN policy, a number of registrars send messages with such labels. Notably the wholesale registrars, which have to send those messages but are not the point of sale of the domain. https://lookup.icann.org/ will probably have clues for the original poster to figure out who to contact. Rubens On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 11:32 AM Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> wrote:
If you let people know the domain name, you might have more luck — e.g someone who works at the registrar may look into it, etc. Also, it seems surprising that this would be an **ICANN** verification message…
W
On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 8:48 AM, Marco Belmonte <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
The company I work for owns a domain that was registered by an employee that no longer works for us and we have been unable to track them down. 48 hours ago the website at the domain was replaced by an ICANN verification message.
It offers two solutions - neither is possible at the moment:
1) resend a verification email - but we already tried that and monitored the mailbox for the old employee but nothing ever came so we think he might have registered it with a personal account.
2) access the portal of the registrar but since don't have credentials and we already tried the reset password link hoping again that if we monitored his old corporate email account we'd see something appear but again nothing :-(
At this point we aren't sure what to do - the site is down and ICANN needs validation of who the site owners are. Does anyone have any ideas or can give us some direction?
Kind Regards,
Marco Belmonte
On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 12:09 PM Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> wrote:
If you let people know the domain name, you might have more luck — e.g someone who works at the registrar may look into it, etc. Also, it seems surprising that this would be an **ICANN** verification message…
Domain providers often refer to them as an "ICANN verification" message. I am pretty sure it is because ICANN creates technical rules the registrars must follow. The domain registrar is the one responsible to complete the verifications and annual reminders, and makes the decision to suspend a domain. But your registrar must implement that verification program in order to follow ICANN technical rules which require a registrar to either suspend the domain or manually verify the information successfully within 15 days of certain actions, such as in case the annual Whois Data Reminder email message bounces with an error, or information was recently updated. Therefore, your domain registrars often title it an ICANN verification message. https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#whoi...
W -- -J
On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 8:26 AM Marco Belmonte via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
The company I work for owns a domain that was registered by an employee that no longer works for us and we have been unable to track them down. 48 hours ago the website at the domain was replaced by an ICANN verification message.
I would say investigate internally first to collect all details regarding the registration. Email based account recovery won't work if the contact email address was on the domain in question and the domain is now disabled. If your contacts' email addresses were in bailiwick, then you would likely have to resort to making calls on the telephone to the domain registrar and provide a PIN code answer or answer security questions method to prove your identity as the admin or primary contact listed on the registration. Domain management ought to never be just one employee. Any recovery of the domain will likely be a slow and manual process if you can't find a contact who's already an authorized admin contact on that domain or get access to the account. Figure out who the employee's supervisor or alt contact was if possible. If not secure copies of the Invoices paid to the registrar, all paperwork, records, emails & electronic communications about the domain as essential evidence. Then find the domain's current registrar on the lookup.icann.org website try calling them and explain the situation. Ask the registrar for all available options of correcting the contacts. If the domain was registered properly with your org's name and address on the registrant field. Then your registrar may offer an offline process through notarized forms on the letterhead of the entity listed as registrant. This is not the case if they used a Privacy registrant and listed Their own info with no mention on the company as registrant name. In that case where the registrar has no record of the domain belonging to you, then legal process is the only really option. If the registrar won't help, then they'd have to decide if they want to serve the employee with legal process and make a UDRP dispute or legal case against the current registrant seeking court orders to direct a transfer on the domain.
Marco Belmonte -- -J
participants (4)
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Jay -
Marco Belmonte -
Rubens Kuhl -
Warren Kumari