Your Domain is in danger – and you might not know it!
Many small business owners with the website are not aware that there domain and website are in danger of being stolen or hacked. This article wants to alert you of the dangers and how to proceed when your website and domain are registered with Go Daddy.
Your domain name – a valuable asset
Your website presents your firm and is closely linked to your branding – so is your domain name. It is important to keep the domain information handy and only share registrar access on a need to basis. If you lose your domain, you lose your firm presentation online.
Make sure that your domain is on auto renewal, with a valid credit card on file, registered with an email address that does not belong to this specific domain. If your domain registration details are public, it is likely that you receive falls domain registration reminders that actually transfer your domain to another service.
Domain Privacy
For those who want to avoid having the domain registration details public, privacy settings can be purchased at most registrars for additional fees [some registrars offer it for free now].
Lock your Domain
This is a simple setting typically found on a registrar’s domain name management page — and doing so prevents a domain name from being transferred to another person or registrar until the domain name is unlocked.
Where are my Domain details?
We have seen so many website owners who could not find their domain registration or the logins to their registrar account. Sometimes the email of registration was invalid, it was registered to a former employee, the credit card was declined and the renewal notification went to spam…
All these scary troubles can be avoided. Best is to register the domain with a free email account like Gmail which is safe and not dependent on renewal fees.
Do not use an email address within the domain you are registering!
How to give someone access to your domain without losing it
Go Daddy has become one of the most used domain registrars worldwide, partly because everything is seemingly very easy. Although the pricing has increased above average and sales reps often try to upsell all products, it is still the number one registrar in the United States. One feature Go Daddy provides which we like very much is the Delegate Access feature in the My Account panel:
Once you click on your name and select Account Settings from the drop-down menu, brings you to a screen with a headline My Profile showing you all the basic information about your account.
Selecting Delegate Access brings you to a list of accounts you can manage and an option to invite others to manage your account.
There are several levels of permission you can grant without giving away ownership and payment information. This is perfect when you want to a invite someone to redirect your website or choose a hosting company other than Go Daddy.
Website security is essential. Don’t gamble.
There are several ways websites can be hacked or taken over. While hacking of hosting companies is rare due to their inbuilt security measures, hacking of websites is a daily occurrence. Today, websites not just a few lines of HTML codes but are built with databases and several coding languages that are unfortunately prone to being compromised. The number one website system is WordPress: Since it is running the majority on websites on the Internet, it is a major target for hackers. Since WordPress and its extensions [called plug-ins] are ongoing be developed and renewed, the race between developers and hackers is never ending. It is important to keep the installation up to date and regularly scanned for compromised files.
Compromised websites are typically blocked by Google and lose visibility and ranking for some time.
If you are not tech savvy, best is to have an agency like SedonaWebsiteDesign take care of the technical maintenance (included in our annual hosting plans).
Our clients also enjoy free evaluation of their registrar and hosting situation. Feel free to contact us for any question.