In January 2014, all domain name registrars were asked to sign a new ICANN agreement. In plain english, this means that your domain name (yourbusiness.com or myco.ca) is maintained by your registrar. You may not even remember who that company is but you pay them (or your IT consultant) a yearly fee to renew your domain. It's like the phone number of the internet.
Without a functioning domain name your website and email can go "dark." In 2014, the new contractual agreement between your registrar and ICANN, the organization that regulates domain registrars may have changed dramatically. ICANN introduced a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) at the end of 2013 and as of January 2015 most domain name registrars have signed the new agreement (you can check if yours did on this regularly updated list). This is the first major update of the agreement since 2009.
The new agreement stipulates that the information on your domain (address, phone number and email address) must be confirmed via email. You may have received a notification from your registrar, that you may have ignored as a scam. Or maybe you didn't receive the email.
This notificatoin IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT spam! Here's a note from one of the oldest registrars, Network Solutions.
Here's the important clause:
You must verify your phone number or email address.
After you register a domain, transfer it to a new registrar, or transfer ownership of a domain, you will have to confirm your email address or phone number with the registrar. If you don’t do this within 15 days, your registration can be suspended or terminated.
You must keep your contact information up-to-date.
You are required to update your registrar on most changes to your contact information with 7 days of any changes.
A suspended domain name means your website and email will stop working. Nothing will be lost, but you must confirm this information to keep in good standing. It can be unsettling for this to happen, so please take good note of your domain names and keep them up to date. Let us know if this has happened to you or if you are concerned. We can confirm netfirms.com has started to enforce this process in January 2015.
