ICANN recently implemented its policy of not requiring verification by the administrator or the registrar of a domain if a request has been issued for a domain transfer. This could be a major change implemented by ICANN, both for active webmasters, and those who have a web site as a side hobby.

I am currently not sure as to why such an implementation was planned; I do not currently see any benefits resulting from it other than to speed up the process of transferring domain names. However, the downside of such a plan is that someone else can [I have not yet verified this personally] can request a domain name to be transferred and if you do not check your email within 5 days [notices are sent through email to the administrative email account listed in the domain contact information], you will lose the domain to that other person, even if you did not wish to authorize such a transfer. The best thing to do is to lock all your domains; locking your domain at your current registrar prevents any form of changes being made to it. Registrars such as Godaddy & others recommend people to lock their domains so as not to fall victim to any schemes to snatch domains away, which may start soon because of this new policy.

DynDNS.org is claiming at this moment that it is not necessary to set a domain to a “lock” status and that as long as your email address is valid, you can check your email within the 5 days allowed by ICANN and deny any requests to transfer a domain name. I am personally not sure what good can come out of such “take it easy” attitude when all it takes to lose a domain is to overlook that very special email, or to lose it somehow [deleting it by accident, getting it blocked or deleted by your spam filters, etc]. Either way, it is the other side of the story to consider and how some companies find the new ICANN policy to have no ill-effect on anything.

Right now, I am not yet thoroughly familiar with how the process works; I will post on it soon when I get the chance. In the meantime, you can read the policies and decide on your own what’s best for you [between locking the domain or checking your email regularly, which you already do and may be easier].