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Domain Insurance by DomainTools
September 4th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
With all the thefts that are happening lately I have been asked what is the best way to protect a high profile domain. My first advice is find a registrar that you can trust and keep your whois information updated and make sure every field works (do not use privacy on a high profile domain). If your phone number doesn’t work or your address is the place you lived 4 years ago it will be hard for someone to validate you used to own the domain when it does get stolen. Keep your information current and accurate. For those that are more paranoid and want more assurance my advice would be to get your own ICANN registrar. You will need about $70K in your bank account plus ICANN fees and processing paperwork should take about $10K to complete. So be prepared with $100K if you want a registrar of your own. Your bill each year from ICANN will be about $5,000. If you have a good domain $5,000 is not a lot of money. Set up your own registrar!
For those of you that really want my personal help. Here is the deal. Yes, DomainTools (Name Intelligence) has its own ICANN Registrar and we can protect any domain with a fence so high no one will be able to steal your domain. We can safeguard domains and provide Insurance on them because we would require a high level of contact with the owner before any change would happen. The cell phone number of the owner and a personal call back would be required to verify any change on a domain.
| Domain Insurance Per Domain | ||
| Cost per Year | Coverage | Per day Lost |
| $100 | $100,000 | $1,000 |
| $500 | $500,000 | $5,000 |
| $1,000 | $1,000,000 | $10,000 |
| $5,000 | $5,000,000 | $50,000 |
| $10,000 | $20,000,000 | $200,000 |
Per Day a domain is stolen. If a domain is stolen. We will pay ten times the yearly fee per day until we recover the domain or until the claim is exhausted. If you want to enroll please email me at “jay -at- domaintools.com”. We are the first company and only company that is offering domain insurance. While this is not our core business however we have a dedicated connection to Verisign that is secure and well guarded. I will personally be monitoring every transaction.
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Posted in Domain Insurance |
September 4th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Pretty cool concept.. Makes sense in some situations, I suppose.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:20 am
how much are the fees with icann?
$7000 first year? $5000 every year thereafter?
just $100k needed in capital but won’t actually be needed to be spent.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Very creative idea.
I could see Jay expanding it as a package deal covering a certain quantity of many domains.
As for running your own registrar, there are back office operations that make it more difficult for a passive domainer.
And, the registrar is only as secure as your passwords.
UPDATE BY JAY: Are service would NOT be an online interface. The interface would only allow for requests. We would handle those requests directly via email and phone. There would be no way to hack into someones account. Our Verisign servers are on a separate network. We would update those records only after phone verification with someone that is authorized.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
which is worst? the theives that steal domains, or the mafia that provides the protection? whois.sc joins the long list of those who make a living at the expense of the victims. you started of as a free service, & found you could make big bucks by charging for subscriptions, oh, it wasn’t enough for you make money on banners, adsense, etc. You began charging for membership, a nice chunk of change, now, you are expanding to the protection racket.. shame, shame, shame………..
UPDATE BY JAY: shame, shame, shame dyemart. I take it you work for free and get paid with happy thoughts. I just ate a cheese burger and it cost $5. That money came from subscribers. Your argument is insane. I wonder why I am even writing something in a comment to you, I am waisting my time. Arrrgg.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Here some people call mafia, the ones that come with creative services…
I don’t think you are the son of Jay, nor his father, nor his brother, probably not even his friend.
So I am wondering why Jay should offer you this service that should cost him money and time for free?
Also I remember you that you are not obligated to subscribe to his new service.
It’s terribe these people that think that all is due and that all must be free….
September 4th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
“we would require a high level of contact with the owner before any change would happen. The cell phone number of the owner and a personal call back would be required to verify any change on a domain.”
There are registrars that will currently offer this type of security to their clients however it isn’t advertised and must be requested.
As for running your own registrar there is registrar leasing program that has recently launched that will allow you to control an ICANN registrar without the huge financial investment or need for back office staff. MyRebel.com
UPDATE BY JAY: I am not talking about leasing. I am talking insurance. If you have a million dollar domain, is insurance on theft worth $1,000 a year? I think it is.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Rebel drop me a note a info (at) cybertonic dot com if you want to spread about your service to the domainer community being advertised in the DNF and NP leaderboards.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I think we need consider You as a registrar option. But … Prices ?
We know we dont be resellers for the issues in secutrity , but want know the price per domain. 15 ?
UPDATE BY JAY: The insurance costs depending on the value of the policy. Each domain would have its own policy. How valuable is your domain and how much do you want to insure it for. Drop me an email and we can discuss the options.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
If you choose to offer such insurance services, I assume your company would only be selling it only NOT underwriting it too…
If you plan to underwrite such insurance, then, in my view, you are taking a huge financial risk that could potentially cost you and your company everything.
Also, research if there are licensing requirements for offering such an “insurance” product - they may not be, but something to check into …
Again, I assume you will have some separate insurance company involved underwriting the policies with your company merely selling the insurance.
On a related topic, a better insurance product to consider offer would be domain “title” insurance - that’s something where your company is well positioned, and is potentally a bigger demand for.
Ron
September 4th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I really have to take issue with dyemart on his comments about Jay, Name Intelligence and Domaintools charging for their services.
When you take the monetary rewards out of the equation you lessen the value and quality of the final product.
I’ve been using these free services for several years and have not noticed any difference except the improvements that have probably been financed by the successes of the paid side of Jay’s business.
Then there’s this excellent blog with all the news and tips from Jay and others that I feel almost guilty about not being a paid member here.
I imagine Jay was very bothered by the recent theft of several domains and as a entreprenuer seen the need for some better service and stepped up to the plate to fill that void. Now the second part of that is, if he’s way out of line on his prices or the service is poor, someone else will show up and compete with him. I can’t see Jay and poor service in the same office.
There’s a lot of free services and products out here and I’m thankful for them but I’m also aware that they go away if the rewards aren’t there somewhere. And money always talks.
September 4th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I could just imagine someone paying $10k for one year and trying to cheat you out of $20,000,000 in some devious way.
In all reality, I doubt this would be a popular business at these amounts; but, there is a need for more domain security overall. I applaud your efforts to look into this side of the business and get people talking. Good luck!
September 4th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I see how he is offering this, as he would have to be the one writing the check if the name is stolen, and he would not allow names to get transfered out without his paying client’s approval, so yes, he is safeguarding you… but the real question is in who would underwrite such a plan? Insurance is a regulated industry, so I hope you talked to a lawyer about that too.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Now that’s what I call balls. You potentially upped the ante.
If managed right, this could benefit all parties concerned. Good luck with the venture!
(And don’t mind comments like those of dyemart. They can basically say whatever they want and still won’t care how things go on the other side of the fence.)
September 4th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
While it sounds great, with no regulations or regulating body that I can see, who decides when a claim has been exhausted, who performs the investigation and recovery operation, pays the legal bills, who fights you Jay when you insist you spoke to the owner and it was a legit transfer ? Do you hold the right to withhold payout? How can you literally handle each and every transfer yourself, when do the registrations and transfer requests surpass one person viability? Will security suffer once more people are needed? Is it even a profitable venture? I have dozens or more questions but the last would be..Is this even legal?
Sincerely. TheLegendaryJP
Jay, I respect you and your desire to serve the community but it doesn’t make it a feasible option or even a good one.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Your concerns are understandable, TheLegendaryJP. Generally this thing is legal until any applicable law or legal decision says otherwise, and that’s just considering only US laws.
You can be sure they’ll try to cover the details under the terms of the agreement. The important thing is to try to fully understand them and know what both can and can’t do.
Hopefully regulation won’t be needed.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Hmmm, not sure if an insurance is the right thing. Why not use a registrar that is only serving businesses? MarkMonitor (Google is using them) or DBMS VeriSign (M$ is using them)? They should be pretty safe, I guess you can’t just login and steal their domain.
UPDATE BY JAY: MarkMonitor or DBMS would be good. But they are not providing insurance. If one of their employees changed the DNS on one of those domains. That would cost the company a lot of money. Even if it was just for 15 minutes. I think it is crazy that Google would trust anyone but themselves from holding the google.com domain. Google.de was deleted for a few hours about 3 months ago. How did that happen? Someone at MarkMonitor dropped the ball.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Posting by ActNow
“As for running your own registrar, there are back office operations that make it more difficult for a passive domainer.
And, the registrar is only as secure as your passwords.”
“UPDATE BY JAY: Are service would NOT be an online interface. The interface would only allow for requests. We would handle those requests directly via email and phone. There would be no way to hack into someones account. Our Verisign servers are on a separate network. We would update those records only after phone verification with someone that is authorized.”
Jay, in your article you offered 3 different processes to protect your domain.
1. Find a registrar you trust.
2. Run your own credential to protect against hi-jacking.
3. Domain Insurance.
I was clearly referencing about running your own credential.
I assume you thought I was talking about access to the insured domains.
UPDATE BY JAY: Thanks for the clarification.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:38 am
dyemart Says:
September 4th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
which is worst? the theives that steal domains, or the mafia that provides the protection? whois.sc joins the long list of those who make a living at the expense of the victims. you started of as a free service, & found you could make big bucks by charging for subscriptions, oh, it wasn’t enough for you make money on banners, adsense, etc. You began charging for membership, a nice chunk of change, now, you are expanding to the protection racket.. shame, shame, shame………..
You need to read “Wealth of a Nation” by Adam Smith.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:16 am
First: Blog trolls are no different than forum trolls. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, do a search in Google. Trolls should be ignored or in some cases, deleted in my opinion.
Now, my first thought from Jay’s post was that some high-rollar domainers should band together and start a registrar, but with Jay’s offer I don’t think that is needed. Still, it may have other benefits that they don’t have now with using other registrars.
Question: I understand that having inaccurate information in the WHOIS record could make ownership questionable, but wouldn’t the record of sale or registration fees help bolster proof of ownership? I would assume that someone that stole a domain would not have this, and I keep ALL the registration and renewal email messages that I get for my domains.
UPDATE BY JAY: Emails can be faked. So they are not good evidence. Accurate whois records are the best way to recover from a theft.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I like the idea of creating an insurance pool, but I would recommend Jay contact an actuarial and an insurance attorney to complete the risk assessment and the policy guidelines required to detail a complete program. I also believe like a previous poster that this insurance product would be very similar to a Title Insurance policy. I know that First American Title has a Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) division that writes a variety of different policies (no affiliation).
The other way would be to set up a special service as registrar that utilizes a voice pin system that is commercially available off the shelf. So besides the online pin system, a domain owner would have to call in and vocally enter in a separate pin, which the domain owner would set up by calling in when the owner registers or transfers a domain into this service. This vocal pin would never be displayed online or in their account. It would be like setting up a “Domain Vault” with a voice entered safety deposit key. You could charge an extra $20 to $40 per domain. This might actually attract a lot more participants. This basic framework might be a lot easier to integrate and provide the next layer of security the market is looking for as domain values are increasing.
UPDATE BY JAY: Pins and passwords can be forgotten. That is how a theft gets in. They send in fake documents and IDs and they they get your passwords changed. Social engineering is the best tool of any hacker.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
What is the name of the Registrar that NameIntelligence owns ?
UPDATE BY JAY: ICANN IANA ID: 627, “Name Intelligence, Inc.”
September 5th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
DomainStar,
If you simply looked at the Registrar list it would show this:
Name Intelligence, Inc. United States .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org
Which shows that the name of the registrar NameIntelligence owns is Name Intelligence, Inc. and is in the United States and is authorized to sell; .biz, .com, .info, .net and .org domain extensions.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Nice idea. Unfortunately (for me) all my domain names put together are probably worth less than a single-years premium!
September 6th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Jay, when you say that one would need about $70,000 to set up a registrar, is that money going to ICANN or is that just capital that one needs to keep on hand, just in case the biz goes belly up (like RegisterFly)? I understand the part about setup and yearly fees, but I wasn’t quite clear about the $70,000.
Like airgun, I’m in the same situation (in that my domains in total are probably worth less than the minimum premium, and, thus, less attractive to thieves), but some of my domains may eventually grow in value. Well, that’s the hope.
Ms. Domainer
UPDATE BY JAY: $70,000 is a requirement set by ICANN to show you can stay in business. That you have a safety net. Once you begin operations they don’t require that you maintain that $70,000.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I see this as yet another sign that the domain industry is becoming more sophisticated, and you Jay are leading the way. Right now you’re just a guy out on the edge, doing things that not everyone understands or approves of, but one day these kinds of services will be standard at the major registrars (for a fee, of course). I’ll have to do a writeup on this for DomainerPro.com. Keep up the innovative work.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
What’s wrong with people? Mafia? Just because they need to earn money to pay for servers, bandwidth and developing hours? In that case most of the world are Mafiosos…..
Jay: Keep up the good work and continue to develop more services like this. I also hope you will be able services like this on complete portfolios of names in the near future.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Seems to me there are a LOT of things to think about with this product/service. What happens when a name is shutdown, taken, forced into someone else’s ownership by legal action or otherwise? Does the insurance payout? If the dns servers go out, if the internet has a major catastrophe, if your ISP goes out, if Seattle power grid goes out and your backup servers go out, etc, etc. There are a TON of things that can cause a domain to not resolve any longer. You’ve hinted at DNS switches by employees etc . . so that’s what got me wondering. Is all this covered too or is the service simply insuring that the domain name is in the original owners name and original dns records are accurate? Insurance to me would cover any problems with my domains making me money. ANY at all. I doubt that product is available. Either way , I look forward to this type of product. I think it’s a good idea but it needs to be clearly written up.
UPDATE BY JAY: Let me answer your questions. Because I don’t see any issues.
If we get a court order to transfer the domain. We will notify the owner that we will carry out the order in 15 days. This will avoid submarine lawsuits and will allow the owner time to get a court order to stay the judgment. All ICANN registrars must follow rulings from the courts. The TOS clearly states this.
We do not provide DNS service. That is not our issue.
If Seattle’s power goes out, nothing would happen. Again we do not provide DNS. However just an FYI. We are in two different datacenters and have redundant power at each location with back generators.
We safeguard the whois, DNS servers remain on the record, and that no changes take place in the root zonefile without the owners consent.
If you are looking for DNS failsafe products I would recommend DNSMadeEasy.com and UltraDNS.com. They have 100% coverage. We use DNSMadeEasy.com for our core services that have 5 minute SLAs.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Thank you, Jay. In that case, it sounds feasible for someone like me, but I’d have to research some more and get my tech skills up to speed and do an analysis on the hardware I would need. I appreciate your taking the time to answer.
Ms Domainer
September 10th, 2007 at 10:44 am
The original concept is good and as the conversation unfolds this seems fairly thought out than the original post may suggest.
Domain Insurance is a good thing, once everyone is clear on what it is, and what it does.
Kudos for at least sharing it with us.
I’ll follow this development for sure.