Reglikedomain industry desk

Breach notice to domain registrar Webnic — ICANN sends

Breach notice to domain registrar Webnic — ICANN sends

Domain industry overseer states domain registrar is lax when investigating and responding to DNS abuse complaints.

Webnic.cc logo

ICANN has sent a breach notice (pdf) to Web Commerce Communications Limited dba WebNic.cc, a fairly sizable domain name registrar in Asia.

WebNic has regarding 500,000 .com domain names under management in addition to domains in other extensions.

ICANN states the registrar is not complying with Section 3.18.2 of the registrar accreditation agreement, which addresses DNS abuse mitigation.

The organization stated Webnic failed to follow appropriate steps when receiving DNS abuse complaints. Also:

ICANN has observed a concerning pattern regarding DNS Abuse mitigation requirements in cases involving WebNic. In multiple instances reviewed by ICANN Contractual Compliance, actionable evidence of DNS Abuse was provided to the Registrar through abuse notes. Still, mitigation actions were repeatedly delayed and, in some instances, only taken until following the abuse reporter escalated the matter by submitting a complaint to ICANN. The Registrar frequently issued repeated requests for evidence to abuse reporters – even when the original notes appeared actionable – and failed to fully consider information or clarifications provided by the abuse reporter, ICANN or otherwise reasonably accessible to the Registrar. In other cases, the Registrar requested evidence from the abuse reporters that did not appear to be relevant to the noted activity, causing additional delays.

It stated the registrar frequently responds to ICANN Contractual Compliance notifications on the last day of the deadline or following it has passed, and those responses are incomplete.

Additionally, it states the registrar is not displaying information on its website that is required, counting:

  1. The details of the Registrar’s deletion and auto-renewal policies
  2. The Registrar’s renewal and redemption/restore fees
  3. The methods used to deliver pre- and post-expiration notifications
  4. The name and positions of the Registrar’s officers and the name of the ultimate parent entity

ICANN Compliance has been contacting the registrar regarding issues since at least February of this year.

Webnic has until August 19 to cure the violations for ICANN will begin the termination process.

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