Over 6% of .no domain names might be deleted soon

NORID, the registry in charge of .no domain names, recently started verifying if owners of existing .no domain names were still allowed to register a .no-name according to the registration rules. In order to be able to register a .no domain name, you need to be an official Norwegian company and only a limited amount of .no domain names may be registered per company. Until now, this was only verified at the time of registration.

The verification process showed information of about 22.000 Norwegian companies that seized to exist, was still used as the owner information of over 35.000 .no domain names. That’s over 6% of all Norwegian domain names currently registered.

In the coming weeks, NORID will be sending out e-mails and letters to all of them, indicating that their registration isn’t according to the .no registration rules and giving them the opportunity to correct the owner information to a company that still is registered in the Norwegian company register. If the information isn’t updated by the owner within 60 days after receiving the notification, the domain name will be suspended and 30 days later it will be fully removed and be available for registration by others.

All however isn’t lost for those who no longer have a Norwegian company but would like to keep their .no domain name. They should be able to keep their name if they transfer it to a registrar offering “local presence” for .no domain names (also known as “trustee service”).

It will be some time before this process is fully completed for all .no domain names. Due to the volume, NORID expects it to take 2 to 3 months before they will have contacted all affected domain name holders.