Verisign asks ICANN to approve ‘Anti Abuse Policy’

Verisign, the registry which is responsible for the management of .com, .net and .name names has asked ICANN to approve an ‘Anti Abuse Domain Use Policy’. This way Verisign would like to get the possibility to interfere when they notice a .com, .net or .name domain name is used registered in bad faith.

Thanks to this new policy, Verisign would be able to check whether a .com, .net or .name domain is using malware. Malware means that someone tries to install certain software on your computer once you surf to a particular website. This software can then be used later on to send out spam. If a website uses such software, then Verisign could reject the registration or transfer of such a name. Moreover they can also lock or delete the domain name. Like this they’ll be able to offer a better guarantee for the security of the DNS, to protect themselves against malware and to comply with any applicable court orders.

The question is of course if with this new procedure certain names won’t be deleted by mistake. It is possible that someone installs malware on your website and that you aren’t aware of this. If Verisign finds malware on your website, they’ll confiscate your domain name without you even knowing you were doing something wrong. Verisign will be offering a protest procedure to reactivate domain names which were deleted by mistake.