Especially for those registrars that currently rent their Verisign Batch Pool connections to Drop-Catching systems such as Snapnames or eNom a looming deadline may have dropped of their radar screen. ICANN has now notified a number of registrars that has ignored previous requests to sign up for the Registrar Data Escrow program and will be naming some of the registrars publicly and may terminate them for non-compliance with the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).
The timing of the deadline is set individually on a per registrar basis and at this point mostly affects those registrars that had several extensions of the deadline before.
What is the Registrar Data Escrow Program?
Registrar Data Escrow (RDE for short) was established after Registerfly failed to be able to present registrant and domain ownership data for a number of domains under their management. Apparently the contact information for a large number of registrants had been lost and replaced with Registerfly’s own “whois privacy” information instead.
The RDE requires registrars to provide ICANN with contact information for all of the domains registered through their registrar on a regular basis in order to prevent difficulties should a registrar become non-operational.
Registrars need to sign up for RDE by signing a joint contract with ICANN and Iron Mountain, the escrow provider picked by ICANN or any other ICANN approved Escrow provider. Once that contract is approved, a sign-up form will need to be completed, encryption keys will need to be generated and then the data exports will need to be deposited.
Drop Catching Registrars and RDE
Most drop-catching registrars are either managed by eNom or Answerable/Logicboxes in the case of SnapNames.
eNom provides their registrar with an export of the RDE required data available via FTP. The registrar will then need to add any data for their own domains (if any) and encrypt & sign the data and provide it to Iron Mountain via Secure FTP.
LogicBoxes apparently offers the RDE participation at at a charge to the registrars using their system, but it may also be possible to extract the data from their system using API calls.
Not set up for RDE participation?
If you own a registrar and have received a letter of warning for your non-compliance with the RDE regulations from ICANN, act as quickly as possible in order to ensure compliance. If you need help setting the reports up, please make sure to contact your registrar operator or contact us if you need help. DomainCocoon can work with ICANN, Iron Mountain and your technical operator on your behalf in order to ensure compliance.
Last modified: November 14, 2016 / Created: Wednesday, July 9th, 2008