'Domain slamming' hits Web sites

An aggressive marketing tactic known as "domain slamming" is causing confusion amongst the many people who have registered domains on the Internet. People, who use the Internet for their business, especially e-business owners, are particularly likely to unwittingly switch Internet service providers and risk bringing their on-line operations to a grinding halt.

What does the term Domain Slamming actually mean?

The term “Domain Slamming” has been borrowed from an aggressive tactic used by telephone carriers that persuade subscribers to transfer their service without realising they are doing so. This tactic has been employed most often in the American market but we have all seen varying instances of it.

It's a trend that is causing a great many ISPs to warn clients to read invoices carefully before paying the annual fees for registering their Web sites.

Why do we need to register domain names?

The registering of domain names is the process used to identify Web sites. It can be a confusing and complicated business for anyone who is not very familiar with the technology that underlies the Internet and the complicated procedures involved in registering the ownership of domain names.

It is this very complicated and confusing aspect that has some Web site owners being mislead and eventually led astray.

How does Domain Slamming actually work?

Many Web users receive mostly letters but sometimes e-mail, that they think are invoices. The mail advises them to pay their annual fees or risk having access to their domain name cut off. Many will assume that this is an official notice and pay the fees, not realising they are sending their payment to a different registrar than the one they originally signed up with and are, in effect, transferring to a new service provider.

Having transferred their registration to a new Internet Service Provider without realising it, some customers discovered that their Web sites were no longer accessible. "You wake up one morning and your Web site is down, your e-mail is not arriving, let alone going anywhere, your employees can’t download and your customers or suppliers can't find your Web site.

Is this just a recent phenomenon regarding the Internet?

In the early part of this year, there was a real upswing in the level of questionable marketing; either confusing or deceptive marketing that went out to many Internet users.

Complaints received by the watchdog organisations indicate that the mailings from similarly named registrars gave the impression they were affiliated with, shall we say, the honest group. It is unfortunate, but in any highly competitive and newly emerging industry we are going to see some parties take advantage of people.

How do businesses protect themselves from this kind unscrupulous behaviour?

It is not only the careless that fall prey to domain slamming and there are several steps that organisations should take to avoid this happening. They should:

• Make sure that there is one person responsible for maintaining the domain registration.
• That the contact information for that person is filed properly and kept up to date.
• They should keep track of all the domains they own, paying attention to the expiry dates.
• Find a good – honest – reliable ISP and run each billing either through them or seek their advice/confirmation before paying.

Then you become almost immune to slamming. It occurs typically when somebody is in receipt of something that they don't understand. People or departments who don't understand the registration process are likely to pay what they think is a valid invoice, particularly if it is accompanied with a warning to act quickly.

There have been instances where unscrupulous Internet dealers in the industry kept sending out invoices, even after customers transferred away from them, simply because people kept paying them.

Overall this is unfortunate because a lot of this Internet stuff is more than hard enough for the person on the street to understand in the fist place. For business trying to engage e-commerce there are major emotional barriers about the Internet and this just adds fuel to the fire.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au