When owning a domain name the owner is required to submit certain data about himself to complete the registration. Name and address information as well as a phone number and an email address are required to be on file. If these pieces of information are not provided the registration can either not be completed or is not valid and the domain name could be taken away.

Often people forget to keep this information updated. This is not a dramatic issue until the domain name expires and needs to be renewed. If the owner keeps track of the names it is no problem, but too often people tend to forget. Email reminders are usually send out by all domain registries. But what happens if the email addresses associated with the domain name are no longer in use? The domain name expiration notification cannot be delivered and the name expires.

What happens when a domain expires?

When a domain expires it will remain in this status for approximately 30 days. During that time the DNS servers of the expired domain will be reset to the domain name registry and the website behind that domain name is down. If the domain name does not get renewed during 30 day time frame, it will be deleted from the domain registry database and at that time the domain will go into Redemption status at the Registry level. The domain name is still recoverable, but only for a significant amount of money. After around 40 days the domain name gets deleted and released and is available for a new registration. Domain Grabbers pick up these expired names and sell them with a profit to whoever pays the most money. If an owner happens to lose a domain name by forgetting about renewing the name and by not acting fast enough when the name is expired, it can mean that the name cannot be recovered by him and that the name belongs to somebody else now.

Therefore it is highly critical to always maintain correct WHOIS data for a domain name and to keep track of expiration dates to renew domain names in an appropriate time frame.