http://domainnamewire.com/2007/02/27/godaddy-deletes-domain-name-for-inaccur... [excerpt] Owner of FamilyAlbum.com finds his domain was re-registered by another GoDaddy customer. The (previous) owner of FamilyAlbum.com was surprised to find that he no longer owned the domain, which had not expired. He contacted GoDaddy to task what happened and received the following response: Dear Tim, On 12/19/2006 we received a third party complaint of invalid domain contact information in the Whois database for this domain. Whenever we receive a complaint, we are required by ICANN regulations to initiate an investigation as to whether the contact data displaying in the Whois database is valid data or not. If we find that there is invalid or missing data, we contact both the registrant and the account holder and inform them to update the information. The contact information for the domain which displayed in the Whois database was indeed invalid. On 12/19/2006 we sent a notice to you at the admin/tech contact email address and the account email address informing you of invalid data in breach of the domain registration agreement and advising you to update the information or risk cancellation of the domain. The contact information was not updated within the specified period of time and we canceled the domain. The domain has subsequently been purchased by another party. You will need to contact them for any further inquiries regarding the domain. If you find any invalid contact information for this domain, please respond to this email with evidence of the specific contact information you have found to be invalid on the Whois record for the domain name. Examples would be a bounced email or returned postal mail. If you have a bounced email, please attach or forward with your reply or in the case of returned postal mail, scan the returned letter and attach to your email reply or please send it to: Attn: Domain Services 14455 N Hayden Rd Suite 219 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 Thank you, Domain Services [IncidentID:87351] I was surprised that GoDaddy took this action without contacting the customer by phone or postal mail. To be clear, it is an ICANN requirement that Whois data be accurate. I am constantly frustrated by inaccurate Whois information and certainly think this goal is admirable. Few registrars do anything about it and often let people register domains with bogus phone numbers such as 555-555-1234 or email addresses such as nospam@nospam.com. It is fair for a domain registration to be revoked for incorrect information, but what should the registrar do to verify the Whois information? Is sending an email enough? People frequently change email addresses and updating Whois is probably not high on their priority list (at least for non-savvy domain owners). If the phone number of postal address are correct, should the registrar still delete the registration? Domain names are valuable. I think it’s reasonable to expect that the registrar will try to contact the domain owner by phone or postal mail at a minimum, assuming the contact information isn’t clearly bogus. In this case the phone and postal address appear to be correct. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a PS3 game guru. Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games. http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121