Internet domain names have now become much more valuable in today’s world as owning one is the first step towards establishing your branding. Since domain names are so important, how exactly can protect your domain name?
How to Protect Your Domain Name
Read on to find out the 3 basic ways to protect your domain name.
1. Purchase a private registration service
Every domain that is registered will have a public record of the person or organization who registered it in the WHOIS database. You need to check your details again on WHOIS and make sure the information posted is accurate.
** You could check your domain WHOIS on many websites. Simply go to Google and type in ‘WHOIS lookup’.
Everyone can see your details on WHOIS, including hijackers, who may see the opportunity to make use of your details for some illegal activities, such as phishing.
To protect your information, a private registration service is needed to shield the real domain name owner from public view.
By familiarizing yourself with WHOIS and how it’s used, you can reduce the chances of falling victim to criminal activities.
2. Check your domain name expiry date
Mark your calendar to know when your domain name expires. You do not want to lose it forever just because of absent-mindedness.
There are companies/individuals whose businesses are to buy expired domain names and charge whatever they want to sell it back to the original owner again.
3. Fight Cybersquatting
Cybersquatting is an intentional act to register an unused domain name similar to an existing website.
For example, a cybersquatter might purchase domainames.com similar to a company’s domain name like domainnames.com (Note the missing ‘n’ in the first domain name) Cybersquatting are betting visitors may misspell the URL and hence browse the wrong website (which might be selling the same products).
So imagine you are the owner of domainames.com. When your business thrives, and you realize a lot of your customers who wanted to visit your website ended up on domainnames.com (with an extra ‘n’), would you pay a high price to obtain domainnames.com?
I’m sure many would.
EXTRA PROTECTION
For extra protection, you may want to consider buying the other extensions of your domain names, such as .com, .sg, .com.sg, .net, .co, etc to avoid falling victim to cybersquatting.
Till then see you soon in the next post!
Related article: BEWARE of Email Scams that Ask for FAKE Domain or Hosting Renewal
