With the signing of the latest accredited registrar agreement with ICANN (RAA 2013) a mandatory Whois data verification policy has been established.
The policy is available on the official ICANN website .
This policy is mandatory for holders of generic domains (.com, .net, .org, info...) and new domains or ngTLDs (.eus, .blog, .futbol, etc.), but does not affect territorial extensions, such as .es.
In summary, the new regulation implies:
The validation of the holder's email for any new registration, incoming transfer or change of holder's data (name, surname or email).
The suspension of the domain (clientHold): in case of not validating the email within 15 days.
The clientHold status means that the domain will stop responding at DNS level, so the services associated with it will stop working (web, mail, etc.). However, the client does not lose the domain, he will be able to continue renewing it on an annual basis, it will just not be functional.
A mandatory validation of the owner's email will occur in any of the following cases:
WRDP: ICANN establishes a Whois data reminder policy whereby a record of the Whois data must be sent to the domain owner once a year, prior to its expiration.
The validation will consist of clicking on a link available in the validation message sent to the registrant's email.
Important points:
Validation is done only once. Once an email has been validated, if it is used in new registrations or transfers, it will not be necessary to validate it again, except in the annual reminder, if the message is returned or the sending fails. Validation is not retroactive. Only new registrations will be validated, not existing domains.
If the validation is not done on time (within 15 days) the domain stops working at DNS level. If validated after a suspension there will be DNS propagation.
The non-validation only applies to the domains for which it was issued. If the same email is also used for other old domains, these will not be affected.