Corporate Blog

Impending registrar transfer of your dot-ca domain(s)

16 November 2024 10:39:38 +0000

This post confirms a mass email we have just sent to a number of registrants of dot-ca domains.

We have decided to change the registrar with which we register dot-ca domains. We are actually returning to OpenSRS; the reasons we left them in 2018 have never really been fixed, but we maintained our account with them because, despite their operational issues, they are a decent registrar that generally tries to do the right thing by dot-ca registrants. Considering the trouble we have had with our current registrar — who go by more names than you can shake a stick at, but they include “CENTRALNIC CANADA INC“, “Team Internet” and “CentralNic Reseller” — this is a significant improvement! The new (old) registrar is, as stated above, OpenSRS, but they also trade under the name of their parent company, Tucows.

We are letting you know that you (as your domain’s owner, or registrant) need to approve this transfer because you ultimately have choice in the matter and have control over your domain. As your domain advisor and host, we recommend that you accept this transfer because it means that pretty much everything will stay the same for your hosting and billing, and the domain renewal you have already paid for will take place at the same time. Additionally, approving this transfer will not interrupt your domain’s service in any way. This is how we continue to serve you and provide our services.

One of the ways in which OpenSRS has not improved — it blows my mind after six years — is that they still can’t seem to decide from which domain they send their emails! You will receive emails from addresses on the opensrs.email and opensrs.org domains. After your domain is transferred you will go back to receiving emails from the “domainsupport” address on the niner.net domain. The initial message will have the subject, “Transfer Request for DOMAIN.CA”, where DOMAIN.CA will be your dot-ca domain. Please click the approve.domainadmin.com link in the message, select the option to approve the transfer and enter your “transfer key”, which we will send to you separately immediately after this message.

After the transfer completes a few minutes later you will also receive confirmation emails from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) using the email address info_AT_cira.ca. All of these messages that you’ll receive around the time you approve the transfer(s) are legitimate, but if you have any questions please do contact NinerNet support.

Thank-you for following these instructions, and thank-you for your continued business.

Tags: cira, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, registrar transfers
Categories: Notices
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iDNS Canada: Another year, another domain scam

9 January 2016 23:24:31 +0000

iDNS Canada domain name expiration notice

Looking very much like the “invoices” sent out years ago by the heavily-fined (and, at various times, suspended by both ICANN and CIRA) so-called Domain Registry of Canada (also known as Internet Registry of Canada, Domain Registry of America, Domain Registry of Europe, NameJuice.com, Brandon Gray Internet Services Inc. and many more), the “not a bill” “domain name expiration notice” received by NinerNet Communications recently reminds us that some people only know how to do business dishonestly — or at the very least on the fringes of legality.

Although it could have been copied, the notice received by us from “iDNS Canada” is almost identical to those of the Domain Registry of America sent out in previous years, and the maple leaf used in the iDNS Canada logo is indeed identical to that used by the Domain Registry of Canada in previous notices.

Let’s analyse a few aspects of this friendly and helpful “domain name expiration notice”:

Their website domain on their notice is idns.as, the dot-as country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) being registered to American Samoa, a south Pacific island nation. Trying to load the website at that address results in a redirection to idns.to, the dot-to ccTLD being registered to Tonga, another south Pacific island nation. I suspect they didn’t register a dot-ca domain because they’re not flavour of the month down at CIRA headquarters (assuming a connection, which is not much of a stretch), and might have had their domain suspended in short order had they registered a dot-ca.
The footer of their website claims that they are “Internet Domain Name Services Inc.” — a name also used on the return envelope in which you’re supposed to send your cheque (or credit card number) and payment stub. Their contact page (when loaded from a computer in Canada) offers the same box number address in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that is on their notice (delivered to our Canadian address; more on that in a moment), which is located in Bridlewood Mall, where there is a Canada Post outlet hosted by Shoppers Drug Mart offering post office boxes.
If you load their contact page from a computer located in the United States (or the United Kingdom, actually), the contact page offers a suite number address at 924 Bergen Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States of America. A quick check shows this to be a UPS Store, so the “suite number” is also actually a mail box number.
On their contact page is an email address on the idnsinc.net domain, which is registered to the same company at the same box number in Jersey City in the US.

There are three notable things about this notice:

First of all, the notice refers to ninernet.com, a secondary domain that we use but which is registered to our US address. However, it was sent to our primary Canadian address, which is also on the same contact page on our website as our US and Zambian addresses.
As with the almost identical Domain Registry of Canada and Domain Registry of America phoney invoices, the “notice” from iDNS Canada makes reference to another “available” domain (in this case ninernet.BIZ) and invites us to send in payment to register it. However, ninernet.biz is not available; it has been registered by us since 2010. There is no indication on the notice what would happen to this extra money if we decided to send it in to register this additional unavailable domain.
Finally, while similar such “notices” in the past have included fine print that authorises the sender to transfer the registration of the domain from under the management of the existing registrar to management by the sender of the so-called solicitation (a process referred to as “domain slamming“), this one doesn’t include any such fine print. In fact, there isn’t even any indication on the “notice” that sending money to iDNS Canada (aka Internet Domain Name Services Inc.) will obligate them to do anything, as they have no way to renew a domain that is not under their control!

So don’t send them money, as you’re almost certainly sending money into a black hole from which you will likely see no service and from which you will probably be unable to retrieve it!

As always, if you receive any kind of communication from a third-party (with whom you don’t already have an established and trusted relationship) about your domain — via postal mail, email, telephone, fax or even smoke signal — be suspicious, be wary. If you’re not sure whether or not it is legitimate, please contact us about it and we will be more than happy to take a look and advise you whether or not it is legitimate.

Tags: cira, domain registration, domain registry of canada, domain renewals, domains, droc, icann, idns canada, internet registry of canada, iroc, registrar transfers, scams
Categories: Warnings
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Technical contact update for domain registrations

30 October 2010 11:18:35 +0000

All domains registered with NinerNet that have NinerNet listed as the technical contact were updated on 19 October to include a working phone number for the technical contact. Please note, however, that this phone number is not a point of contact for NinerNet clients. (Frankly, while it’s a working number and is monitored, its sole purpose it to avoid time-wasting telemarketers.) Actually, all of the contact information we use for domain registrations is not for the use of clients: Postal mail is not collected regularly, and email to the email address is heavily filtered to allow only email from certain domain registries and registrars through. Please refer to our contact page for contact information for clients.

Owners of dot-ca domains may notice that the name of the technical contact (where NinerNet is listed) is shown as “Domian Adnimistrator” [sic]. This intentional misspelling is because CIRA (as a result of a recent, but unannounced, policy change) doesn’t allow the “name” field to contain certain generic words. This doesn’t make sense, as people can come and go from a company, while positions generally remain the same. In fact, the “role account” has a long and distinguished history when it comes to domain registrations that dates back at least as far as the 1990s.

Tags: cira, contact information, domain registration, domains, dot-ca domains
Categories: Notices
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Vital update for registrants of existing third- and fourth-level dot-ca domains!

12 October 2010 05:30:03 +0000

5 October 2010 (original posting date on NinerNet website)

Further to our email of 17 September regarding the upcoming changes that the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is making to the dot-ca domain system, we have some new news that really is vital for you to know if the following conditions all apply to your dot-ca domain:

You own a third-level dot-ca domain (e.g., example.bc.ca) or a fourth-level dot-ca domain (e.g., example.vancouver.bc.ca), AND
The second level of your domain (e.g., example.ca) is not registered, AND
Nobody else has your name registered at another provincial level (e.g., you own example.bc.ca and someone else owns example.on.ca).

This email is being sent only to those clients we know meet all of the above three criteria.

Contrary to what we were told by CIRA last month, if you do not register your domain at the second level (e.g., example.ca) before 12 October, you will not be able to do so on or after 12 October. Your domain at the second level (e.g., example.ca) will be indefinitely blocked. You will still have the use of your third- or fourth-level domain unless or until you let it expire. In fact, the only way, after 12 October, for you to register your domain at the second level will be to allow any other domains you have at the third and fourth level to expire. Even then, there is no mechanism in place that gives you first dibs on your domain at the second level, so if someone is quicker on their mouse than you at the moment your third- or fourth-level domain expires (a moment that cannot be predicted with any certainty or guarantee), they might get it before you and you will completely lose your rights to your name.

With the above new information in mind, please contact us immediately (or at the very least on or before Monday, 11 October) if you want to register your dot-ca domain at the second level before you lose that ability permanently. We’ll be following up this email with personal phone calls today and tomorrow to ensure that you’re fully aware of the situation.

Tags: cira, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, dot-ca domains, registrant transfers, registrar transfers
Categories: Notices
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Dot-ca domain registry changes, 12 October 2010

11 October 2010 23:53:53 +0000

17 September 2010 (original posting date on NinerNet website)

Overview

In October, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) will be making sweeping changes to their system for registering dot-ca domains. However, they have done almost nothing to communicate details about these coming changes to dot-ca domain holders and the Canadian public at large — i.e., potential dot-ca domain registrants. We got wind of these changes last week, but it took until this week for us to be able to extract the details below from CIRA after a flurry of emails and a phone call this week.

In the middle of all of that, CIRA did finally send an extremely vague email to dot-ca domain registrants. We received our copy on 10 September; the subject of the email was “Information Regarding the New .CA Registry”. This held about as much detail — i.e., almost none — as the press release on the CIRA website and the FAQ buried so deep you could be forgiven for missing it. There is another page on the CIRA website with slightly more detail, but the only reason we know about that is because the address was given to us over the phone earlier this week.

An opportunity

But in all of this complaining about the lack of communication from CIRA, there’s actually a potential fun side to consider. It’s worth reading (or skipping) to the end, because this is a time-limited opportunity to own a rather unique — and potentially amusing — piece of Canadian Internet history. For example, consider the-canucks-rule-in.vancouver.bc.ca. Or how about this odd domain?: i-need-directions-to.toronto.bc.ca.

5 OCTOBER 2010: Vital update for registrants of existing third- and fourth-level dot-ca domains!

You own a third-level dot-ca domain (e.g., example.bc.ca) or a fourth-level dot-ca domain (e.g., example.vancouver.bc.ca), AND
The second level of your domain (e.g., example.ca) is not registered, AND
Nobody else has your name registered at another provincial level (e.g., you own example.bc.ca and someone else owns example.on.ca).

This email is being sent only to those clients we know meet all of the above three criteria.

But seriously …

But first the serious stuff. Unfortunately, the email from CIRA mentioned above leaves out some very important information that is nowhere to be found on the CIRA website. Even the important information that is available is buried, and it was only through a series of emails with CIRA (before they sent out the email on 10 September) and a twenty-minute phone call this week that we managed to extract the apparently top secret information below.

As of the date (see below for dates) of the overhaul of the dot-ca registry:

Third- and fourth-level dot-ca domains will no longer be allowed.
Domains will be automatically renewed.
Registrant profiles will cease to exist.

At the moment, despite our attempts to clarify the process of automatic renewal with CIRA, this aspect is still unclear. It should not mean that you are automatically charged for another year on your domain unless you opt out. Certainly, that’s not what it will mean if your dot-ca domain is registered with NinerNet, if we have any say in the matter. The last point on registrant profiles is actually a good thing; the old system of registrant profiles was a dog’s breakfast, to put it politely.

Third- and fourth-level domains?

The first point — on third- and fourth-level domains — is the one of interest to us, and will affect different people in different ways. The most important thing though is that, if you already own (or register before the cutover) a third- or fourth-level dot-ca domain, you will get to keep it. (Don’t ever let it expire though, or you will lose it forever.)

But what are third- and fourth-level domains anyway? Here are some examples:

Fourth-level domain: yourname.vancouver.bc.ca
Third-level domain: yourname.bc.ca
Second-level domain: yourname.ca

This is how the coming changes will affect people:

In the future you will only be able to register yourname.ca, not yourname.bc.ca or yourname.vancouver.bc.ca.
Even if you already own yourname.bc.ca and so have the right to register yourname.on.ca or yourname.winnipeg.mb.ca before anyone else, you will no longer be able to register anything but yourname.ca, assuming it’s available.
If, due to grandfathering, you own yourname.bc.ca and someone else owns yourname.sk.ca, there will still be a block on registering yourname.ca.
If you own yourname.bc.ca and nobody else owns yourname.ca or yourname.XX.ca (where XX is a provincial or territorial abbreviation), then you will still have a block on yourname.ca — i.e., nobody but you can register yourname.ca. THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE! Please see the update in the pink box at the top of the page.

When does this go into effect?

When does all of this take place? The new system officially goes into effect at 6:00 am Pacific time on Tuesday 12 October, and the dot-ca registry will be offline during the transition until 6:00 am Pacific time on Wednesday 13 October. (CIRA has decreed that there be no overlap period, so it better work right the first time!) However, there is a lead-in period of one week before 12 October during which there will be a moratorium on certain activities. (To be on the safe side, consider 4 October to be your deadline to all intents and purposes.) All of these are activities that require you to log into the CIRA website to confirm your choices — which is most things outside of changing the technical contact for your domain. If you have any concerns about your dot-ca domain and what you might want to do with it between now and the middle of October, please contact NinerNet support for details, or see the CIRA website for details.

There are two notable exceptions, as far as we have been able determine:

There will be no interruption of the registration of new domains.
If you want to register a “Conflicting Domain Name”, you must do so by 27 September. For example, you own yourname.bc.ca and want to register yourname.ab.ca, but someone already owns yourname.nl.ca. This is considered a “Conflicting Domain Name” and you cannot register yourname.ab.ca without the express consent of the owner of yourname.nl.ca. Because you will not be able to register yourname.ab.ca at all after 12 October, if you have any designs on this type of domain you must take action before 27 September.

Why register a third- or fourth-level domain?

But besides all of the above, the next few weeks are your last chance to own a third- or fourth-level dot-ca domain. Thousands of them exist. Here are some:

Besides simply wanting to own a .XX.ca domain, there’s a good reason to own them if you’re an organisation or business with distinct units in multiple provinces and territories. Consider the fictitious XYZ Corporation. The head office website and email would be on the xyzcorp.ca domain, while the Yukon office would use the xyzcorp.yk.ca domain for their email and website. And so on. It sure beats xyzcorpcanada.com and xyzcorpcanadayukon.com.

Now for the fun stuff

Apart from the fact that third- and fourth-level dot-ca domains are going the way of the dodo bird, and so you might want to grab your own piece of Canadian Internet history while you can, how about having some fun with it? Consider domains like the following, with or without the hyphens:

Advertise where you live:
- craig-lives-in.vancouver.bc.ca
Advertise what you’re looking for and where:
- looking-for-a-good-time-in.fredericton.nb.ca
Say something political:
- i-say-no-hst-in.bc.ca
- say-no-to-hst-in.bc.ca
Show how much of a sports fan you are:
- the-canucks-rule-in.vancouver.bc.ca
- the-maple-leafs-suck-in.toronto.on.ca
Steal the prime minister’s identity:
- stephenh.ottawa.on.ca

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago, but there’s nothing to stop you from getting your provinces and cities confused. In a slap-myself-on-the-forehead moment (I should have used hyphens so it would be easier to read), I registered iamsolostin.toronto.bc.ca. Try it. It works! Think about these possibilities:

Heard the one about the Conservatives moving the capital to Alberta?:
- stephenh.ottawa.ab.ca
More along the lines of being dazed and confused:
- we-are-lost-in.winnipeg.sk.ca
- where-am-i-now.toronto.bc.ca
- confused-in.calgary.qc.ca

All of these and more are available (as of this writing) for registration.

Conclusion

Now you know more than most people about the extensive changes CIRA is planning to make to the dot-ca registry effective 12 October 2010. Of course, all of this is subject to the whims and rules of CIRA, so if and when they publish more detailed information you should defer to that.

If you have any questions or concerns, or need to register a new third- or fourth-level domain before it’s too late (or even a second-level dot-ca domain per the update at the top of this page), please contact NinerNet support.

Tags: cira, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, dot-ca domains, registrant transfers, registrar transfers
Categories: Notices
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