General

Have You Protected Your Aussie Domain Names?

Posted on by Domainer
06
Aug

How would you feel if you suddenly discovered that your special “.com.au” domain name was on the expired auctions list?

Or worse still, it had already been on the list and was purchased by another party?

“No way” I hear you think! “It could never happen to me”.

But it does happen every single day in Australia.

How and why does it occur?

We have some very strict licensing rules in Australia. And these are enforced by our regulator auDA through their .au accredited registrars.

Each domain extension in Australia has its own rules / criteria, but the following comments apply to the most popular extension in Australia – the .com.au.

One of the main criteria is “eligibility”. When you register and renew an Aussie domain name you give a warranty (via your registrar) that your entity is eligible to be the registrant. This means that you have a valid ABN or ACN – or in some cases, a trademark or other accepted means. The main ones are ABN’s or ACN’s.

If your ABN has been cancelled, and/or your ACN has been deregistered (and you used one of these as “eligibility”), then you are in danger of losing your domain name.

All it takes is auDA to do an audit (which they do regularly), and you could be in trouble. Alternatively, someone or somebody who covets your domain and knows you have “breached the rules” could make a complaint, and you will also have a problem.

Another thing to look out for is whether you originally registered your domain in the name of a Discretionary Trading Trust. A Discretionary Trading Trust is no longer eligible to register or hold a .com.au domain. That said, the Trustee entity for the Trust is eligible – simply update your eligibility using the trustee’s ABN/ACN.

Two recent examples

  1. We got a phone call last week from an older gentleman who lost his domain because his company was deregistered. He didn’t realise this had happened. It went on the auctions, and we bought it. We returned it to him at cost plus transfer fees. (Not everyone would be so friendly!).
  2. We sold a domain name last week on behalf of a client, but the seller had an invalid ABN (it was cancelled). It took a lot of work to get it sorted out.

Prevention is easier than cure

I recommend everyone to check the official Whois to see what eligibility details you are using.

Then check the ABN Lookup and/or ASIC to make sure your entity is valid. If it isn’t, then contact your registrar to either attempt a correction or do a Change of Registrant (conditions may apply).

auDA doesn’t want anyone to lose their domain, and they will give you every reasonable opportunity to get things fixed.

Best wishes for your online success.

 

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