Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

“Time to lawyer up…” Anger grows over Verisign’s .name bloodbath

Kevin Murphy, September 22, 2026, 11:07:34 (UTC), Domain Registries

When Verisign said it wanted to unilaterally delete 22,000 .name domains from its registry, it assured ICANN that most of them were not in use and seizing them would not cause any security concerns.

But “most” is not “all”, and the chorus of voices demanding a U-turn and essentially accusing the company of trying to steal their domains to auction off to the highest bidder is growing, with one registrant openly mulling legal action.

ICANN has received two more Requests for Reconsideration, bringing the total to four, representing about a dozen more registrants of third-level .name domains that take the format firstname.lastname.name.

Most of the registrants have owned their domains for over two decades and are horrified to learn — registrars seemingly started notifying them around August 28 — that they were to be seized.

Software developer Neil Fraser told ICANN he was representing himself and nine others who would be “threatened with the risk of comprehensive identity theft” if Verisign is allowed to delete and resell their names.

The legacy unique structure of .name, when it launched 25 years ago, was that a customer could acquire firstname.lastname.name — the registry would take ownership of lastname.name, and the registrant would own the third-level domain only.

Verisign’s plan, which has been approved by ICANN, is to delete these 22,000 domains and make the second-level available via some unspecified mechanism at a later date, perhaps as early as next February.

Fraser says that the new registrant could set up an email address matching the one he has been using for 25 years.

“They would have access to banking, government, taxes, and other services,” he wrote. “There is no way to enumerate all the accounts that have been opened using this email address over the past quarter century.”

“I’m just one of 22,000 people who will lose their domains. This is going to be fun. Time to lawyer up…” Fraser wrote on his web site.

Another affected registrant, lawyer Troy Rollo, said in his RfR that he’s been trying to update the email address associated with his online accounts registered since 2002 and found it nigh-on impossible.

Verisign, for its part, says that it wants to standardize the .name registry around the industry-standard two-level gTLD naming structure, to simplify things technically for itself and the registrars that actually sell the names.

Both new RfRs, along with two others filed over the last couple of months, are asking for ICANN to reverse its decision to allow Verisign to delete these names and emails, or at the very least grandfather existing registrants.

ICANN and its independent Ombuds have so far shown little inclination to do so, and RfRs are almost uniformly unsuccessful historically, but the final decision will at some point soon have to be made by the full board of directors.

Domain Incite relies on support from readers like you to survive. Please consider making a one-off or recurring donation via PayPal. Please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.

Tagged: , , , ,

Add Your Comment