At 28/07/2010 07:26 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
I don't see any obviously correct solution to this problem. I'd like to say that if the email bounces, the registrar has to try to contact the registrant using the other info to tell them to fix it, but that has its own problems. Due to all the fake renewal notices from places like DRoA, the registrant is as likely as not to throw away mailed notices, and registrars would argue that for $8/yr, they can't afford to send mail nor to deal with the phone calls.
For a medium-large registrar who may send out tens or hundreds of thousands of expiration warning messages per day, bounce processing and analysis is not really practical. But the concept of telephoning or even sending paper mail is not necessarily unrealistic. Yes, there may be a cost involved (although not particularly large for automated voice messages within much of the developed world). How relevant that cost is depends on what percentage of domain names get to the point of expiring and still not renewed, saw a week or two later). If that is only 1% of all renewals, then a $1.00 cost per call or letter averages out to only $0.01 per domain name registration. Unfortunately, only registrars know exactly what percentage of domains expire and the renewal pattern after expiration, and they are not sharing this data. Alan