Domain management

Yesterday one of the bigger ESPs had their domain registration lapse. This caused a whole host of problems for their customers. It was resolved when someone completely unrelated to the company paid the registration fee.
It happens. Most of us know about cases where email or domains were lost due to renewal failures. The canonical case is one person at the company handles renewals, and leaves or is off when renewal comes up. The payment is missed, the domain goes back to the registrar and everything falls apart.
This happens at big companies and it happens at small companies. This is the kind of public facing problem that should make all of us look at how our own domains are managed. A few questions to ask.

  1. What domains do we own and use? Is there a list somewhere?
  2. What department owns the domains / brand?
  3. Who maintains the registrations?
  4. When do your domains expire?
  5. Who is the backup maintainer?
  6. Who has passwords and access?
  7. Who can make changes?
  8. Are we using any domains that we don’t own?
    1. What are they?
    2. Why don’t we own them?
    3. Should we own them?
  9. Who gets emails and alerts from our registrar?
  10. Who should get emails and alerts from the registrar?

These are only some of the questions to ask. Of course, not every person inside the company needs to know all these details. But domains are critical and so some people should know. Personally? If I had “director” or higher in my title, I’d be asking these questions and more.
Domain information should be in the “hit by a bus” file. It’s too important an issue to drop if the person currently handling it is hit by a bus.

Healthcare, eh?
Mike might be spamming, but why?

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CA court requires sender identification on emails

Venkat analyzes the appeals court decision in Balsam v. Trancos, Inc.. In this case the appeals court decided that emails have to identify some actual person or entity they are sent by or from. Emails that do not identify the sender are in violation of the California anti-spam statute.
Venkat talks about all the reasons he thinks this is a problematic ruling, and the CA courts and anti-spam activists certainly have their share of bad rulings. I’m less convinced. The crux of the case seems to be that the advertiser used a number of random domains to hide the responsible party for an email. Rotating domains is a very, very common spammer tactic that is specifically a way to avoid domain based filters.
I understand Venkat’s concern but as someone who gets a lot of these spams I think the court is certainly ruling within the spirit of the CA statute. These mailers are using random domains to avoid filters and mislead recipients as to the source of the mail. Even if the domains are legitimately owned by the advertiser, they are usually hidden behind privacy protection and give the recipient no real information about who is sending the mail.
Another interesting point is the court speaking out against privacy registration. Personally, I don’t think any business should ever hide their domain registration behind privacy protection. If you’re a business, then you should stand up and give real contact information. I know it can be scary, particularly for people working out of their home, but if you’re a real business, you need to have an address registered with your state. Furthermore, if you’re a business sending email, all that email must contain a physical postal address. Your address already needs to be public, and including that in whois records isn’t actually going to change anything.

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Domains need to be warmed, too

One thing that came out of the ISP session at M3AAWG is that domains need to be warmed up, too. I can’t remember exactly which ISP rep said it, but there was general nodding across the panel when this was said.
This isn’t just the domain in the reverse DNS of the sending IP, but also domains used in the Return Path (Envelope From) and visible from.
From the ISP’s perspective, this makes tons of sense. Some of the most prolific snowshoe spammers use new domains and new IPs for every send. They’re not trying to establish a reputation, rather they’re trying to avoid one. ISPs respond by distrusting any mail from a new IP with a new domain.

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ICANN goes after Dynamic Dolphin

ICANN sent a letter to domain registrar Dynamic Dolphin notifying them of their non-compliance with the ICANN Registrar Agreement.
HT: Neil Schwartzman
(Today appears to be retro-blogging day. First I blog about s.1618 then I blog about Scott Richter.)

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