Breach notice to Freenom’s accredited domain registrar — ICANN sends

ICANN has sent a breach notice to the registrar for the third time.

ICANN has sent a breach notice (pdf) to OpenTLD B.V., an accredited registrar that’s part of the Freenom group of firms.

Freenom is best known for giving away free domain registrations in a dwindling number of country code domain names as it faces legal challenges.

But it also has common ownership with OpenTLD in order to offer ICANN-accredited TLDs. (It doesn’t seem to provide fresh registrations right now, at least through freenom.com.)

ICANN states OpenTLD is not responding to a number of requests it has made:

1. OpenTLD’s failure to make registration data and records available upon request by ICANN, as required by Section 3.4.3 of the RAA.

2. OpenTLD’s failure to permit the Registrants at Expiration (“RAE”) to renew expired domain name registrations, as required by Section 2.2.5 of the Expired Registration Recovery Policy (“ERRP”).

3. OpenTLD’s failure to provide Registered Name Holders (RNHs) with AuthInfo codes and remove the “ClientTransferProhibited” status from domain names upon RNHs’ request, as required by Section I.A.5 of the Transfer Policy. OpenTLD also failed to provide a valid reason for denying the requests supported by the Transfer Policy.

The breach notice lists a number of domains for which it would like details and also states it needs a complaince certificate from the registrar.

It points out this isn’t the first time ICANN has raised issues like this with the registrar. It also sent breach notices in 2017 and 2020.