[dns-operations] Monitoring for impending expiration of domains?

[John Levine]

In article <CABf5zvK5Xvg_FAHpoKrm=SvRnVtKTab03UK=C3cWSvYD1_j5Vw at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>My *impression* is the most serious risks a domain owner faces for losing
>control of the domain are either because the registration lapses, as is
>being discussed here, or because the domain is registered by someone else,
>e.g. the tech or admin contact, who then either leaves the company or
>refuses to give up control. ...

In my experience, the most common problem is bit rot.

For example, a few years ago one of our local churches had their
domain expire the week before Easter. Ten years earlier whoever was
the church secretary had set it up with a Tucows reseller, but the
secretary had left long ago, the reseller had gone out of business,
and if there were any renewal notices sent, they didn't go to anyone
who saw them.  By an Easter miracle, they happened to talk to a local
ISP who happened to know I was a Tucows reseller and I happened to
have good enough contacts to get the church's domain moved into my
reseller account so I could renew it, but failing that they would
have given up and started over with a new domain.

Before anyone writes back with "they should have ...", they're a
church, what they did a decade ago was reasonable at the time and they
had no warning anything was wrong until their web site disappeared.

I try to avoid this by only letting my users renew for two years at
a time so I stay in touch with them, but I have run into situations
where I know they are using the domain so I renew it, then they don't
respond to the mail asking them to pay, so I eventually park their
domain and wait for them to complain.  "Oh, that old address, I don't
use that any more."  "You shoulda told me."

R's,
John