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About Change of Registrant

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To update the registrant information listed in the Whois database or transfer your domain name to a different registrant, please contact the registrar with which the domain is registered.

For information about the domain name, including the registrar name, conduct a WHOIS search at https://whois.icann.org. The registrar's name will be included in the result. A list of registrars and links to their websites is on the ICANN-accredited Registrar list.

After 1 December 2016, the Transfer Policy specifies how registrars must handle changes of registrant name, registrant organization name, registrant email address, and administrative email address (if there is no registrant email address) displayed in the Whois information.

60-Day Lock After Change of Registrant

After 1 December 2016, registrars must impose a lock that will prevent any transfer to another registrar for sixty (60) days following a change to a registrant's information. Registrars may (but are not required to) allow registrants to opt out of the 60-day lock prior to the change of registrant request.

To transfer a domain name to another registrar and change the registrant's information, registrants may:

  • Request the transfer to another registrar before changing the registrant's information (to avoid the 60-day lock); or
  • Have the prior registrant opt-out the 60-day lock (if this option is offered by the registrar) before making any change to registrant information.

Because policies may vary by registrar, please review a registrar's policy before making a change to registrant information or transferring to another registrar.

If you want a domain name that somebody else has already registered, you have some options, which might include:

  1. Working out an agreement with the current registrant.
  2. Waiting to see if the current registrant lets the domain name expire.
  3. Filing a lawsuit in court against the current registrant.
  4. For cases involving "abusive registrations", you may be able to begin an administrative proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

Read more about Filing a UDRP

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."