Who Owns Your Domain Name?

Apr 18 2008

Published by Ricky at 12:56 am under BizPartner, Hosting

In the hosting industry, customers are supposed to have the freedom to choose their hosting provider and switch to a better provider if necessary. I myself process many hosting transfers in and out every month.

In providing hosting service, I notice some customers actually do not own their own domain name. But their domains are owned by their web designer, and sometimes even their hosting provider. They are not the legal owner of the domain names they bought!

I’m not sure why some designers and hosting providers have to own their customers’ domain names. Maybe it’s a way to control the customers in order to get bills paid. Maybe it’s easier for them to administer the web sites of their customers. Maybe they want to prevent customers from switching hosting provider. Or maybe they just want more bargaining power dealing with customers. In any case, the innocent customers often lose out as they are at the mercy of their provider.

I would disagree with such practice. Not only that I don’t want to bear the legal risk as the domain owner when customers misuse their web site or email service, but I think customers should own what they pay for.

Who owns your domain name? You can check it out here at Whois-Search.com. Of course you can also do a search on my site here (see Domain Search at top right corner).

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