When I register a domain, is that domain permanently available for me to use? I believe not, considering the companies which offer this service request both a registration and a renewal fee. So if the company dissolves, wouldn’t I lose my domain?
If so, then the relevant PG advice makes no sense. It requires email services to have custom domain support because they:
Allow users to use their own domain name. Custom domain names are important to users because it allows them to maintain their agency from the service, should it turn bad or be acquired by another company which doesn’t prioritize privacy.
Users will have no more agency in maintaining their email address, but rather, will merely be putting their trust in the domain register instead of the email provider.
Obviously not permanent as per you realized, got a renewal fee. Contrary to how people refer to it as owning/buying a domain name, its really more of a renting. You pay a fee to rent the power of administrating a zone.
Registering domain name is basically skipping a middleman. Instead of using @gmail.com and abiding by Google rule to use their domain name, you skip them alltogether and having full control of @yourdomain.com yourself.
By “the company” you meant the registrar? Assuming you have proper contactable email address and phone number listed as domain owner in whois record then no you won’t lose domain in case registrar going bust going bankrupt or something. Icann already got few mechanism in place to prepare for that. Read about RegisterFly case @ Wikipedia.
By “the company” you meant the registrar? Assuming you have proper contactable email address and phone number listed as domain owner in whois record then no you won’t lose domain in case registrar going bust going bankrupt or something. Icann already got few mechanism in place to prepare for that. Read about RegisterFly case @ Wikipedia.
Yes, I mean registrar. But am I correct in saying that unless this registrar is the official operator of that domain (i.e., verisign for .com/.net), then the company/registrar is still indeed a middle-man.
Shouldn’t we therefore only sign up with official operators of a given domain, to ensure we are dependent on as few services as possible, therefore minimizing the attack surface and minimizing the likelihood of private data being leaked.
On that note, is it possible to register a domain anonymously? If not, but the registry provides domain privacy, how should we assess the security of the service?
Previously you could skip registrar and register directly with registry but nowadays its rare for registry to allow direct registration with them.
Probably you could find few that still allow it if you look hard enough but then you’re limited to use their tld that might have tos that you can’t abide by or fullfil ie local presence requirement. Imho not worth the hassle.
Edited: dominios.es/en the registry for .es of Spain and tonic.to the registry for .to of Tonga still allow direct registration under them but like I’ve mentioned before, if to use either you’re now limited to .es, and .to
Technically you can register a domain 100% anon by using a proxy registrar. Theres few of them around. But by using them you’re adding an extra middleman since they’ll be registering under their own name and rent it back to you. In the eyes of icann, they’re the legitimate owner not you. If something like RegisterFly case happen to them, icann wouldn’t hand back the domain back to you ie you’ll lose the domain. Should be ok if only use the domain for unimportant site or something, but as email domain, address@ linked to your digital life? You wouldn’t want to lose all address@ overnight wouldn’t you.
Just use a proper registrar and pick a tld that allow whois privacy and you’ll be 100% private from the public since public whois query would only show redacted info. Basically you can’t properly “own” a domain name while being anon from registrar, registry and icann.
Depends on context and circumstances. As example if I’m a Spain citizen residing in Spain, and assuming Spain isn’t a shitty country controlled by a regime that could arbitrarily suspend domain overnight without reason then getting an .es makes sense to me.
The registry then will be local to me, if something happens to my .es domain i’ll get to physically visit the registry office and try to solve the issue f2f with them. If i decided to involve local court, the registry would be forced to abide by the said court order since its an entity operating locally and are bound to local law enforcement.