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What to do when a buyer won't change WHOIS contacts?

atom

Administrator
A few years ago I sold a domain to someone who contacted me out of the blue with an offer. Since then he hasn't updated the WHOIS data, so it's still in my name and has my email address as the contact (he changed the physical address to something meaningless).

I contacted him a number of times over the following year or so and he always apologised and said he'd do it. He hasn't, and the email address I had for him no longer works.

I've tried contacting the registrar but that hasn't worked either, and ICANN aren't interested.

It's not a massive deal at this stage because he doesn't have a site on it (didn't even change the DNS servers), but that could change.

Any suggestions?

TIA!
 

johno69

Top Contributor
Do nothing. It's not your domain to worry about anymore anyway.

Why is it bothering you?
 

findtim

Top Contributor
document your attempts to contact the owner then forget about it.

i have a different but similar thing at the moment, i have a client thats disappeared, they closed the business but the domain names have value but i can't contact them so when they come to renewal, do i pay or do i let them drop?

tim
 

atom

Administrator
Do nothing. It's not your domain to worry about anymore anyway.

Why is it bothering you?

Because it's registered in the name of my business, and the contact email is under my business domain. If they put up a site I don't want to be associated with I seem too be without options to fix it.
 

Eurorealtor

Member
Keep the proof that you contacted the registrar and ICANN in case the new domain owner will run some website braking law, sending spams, etc, to avoid any future problems as the listed owner.

A few years ago I sold a domain to someone who contacted me out of the blue with an offer. Since then he hasn't updated the WHOIS data, so it's still in my name and has my email address as the contact (he changed the physical address to something meaningless).


I contacted him a number of times over the following year or so and he always apologised and said he'd do it. He hasn't, and the email address I had for him no longer works.

I've tried contacting the registrar but that hasn't worked either, and ICANN aren't interested.

It's not a massive deal at this stage because he doesn't have a site on it (didn't even change the DNS servers), but that could change.

Any suggestions?

TIA!
 

johno69

Top Contributor
Because it's registered in the name of my business, and the contact email is under my business domain.

You could do a registrar change and update the details yourself, then push it back to their account.

Probably going a bit too far, but if all else has failed.
 

Honan

Top Contributor
A few years ago I sold a domain to someone who contacted me out of the blue with an offer. Since then he hasn't updated the WHOIS data, so it's still in my name and has my email address as the contact (he changed the physical address to something meaningless).

I contacted him a number of times over the following year or so and he always apologised and said he'd do it. He hasn't, and the email address I had for him no longer works.

I've tried contacting the registrar but that hasn't worked either, and ICANN aren't interested.

It's not a massive deal at this stage because he doesn't have a site on it (didn't even change the DNS servers), but that could change.

Any suggestions?

TIA!
It depends on if it is a com.au or a. Com and what registrar it is.
Do not ignore it.
 

findtim

Top Contributor
if they develop it then perhaps new contact info will become available for you, seems a big waste of your time though

tim
 

atom

Administrator
You could do a registrar change and update the details yourself, then push it back to their account.

Probably going a bit too far, but if all else has failed.

It depends on if it is a com.au or a. Com and what registrar it is.
Do not ignore it.

It's a .com with Godaddy, so I wouldn't have access to request the auth code.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I'll keep a record of the previous email exchanges just in case, and will try reporting it to Godaddy again.
 
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