How to protect a domain name?

[now_i_m_here]

Hello,

I have registered a domain at GoDaddy.com. I am aware that some domains get stolen.
I want know what are the best ways to protect a domain name?!
GoDaddy has put my domain in locked state.
Is it enough?! What else can I do beyond having very difficult to guess password for my GoDaddy.com account?

[ejfern22]

I have not heard of people stealing domain names. One thing I do is use private registration for all my domains. As long as you have registered a domain with a reputable registrar your domain shouldn't get stolen.

[Jerlene]

People steal domains all the time. The first thing to do is just opt for the odmain privacy when registering your domain. Or you can go back to your already paid for domains and opt for it at anytime. It may cost a little but it's worth it.

[saji18]

True story: A small business owner, who was not a client, called me one day with a problem. Let?s call him ?Dave.? His web site was missing. Not missing from the search engines, missing completely. Gone. No longer reachable at his domain. It was nothing I could help with since he wasn?t a client, but we kept talking. I wanted to learn more.

Dave had a disagreement with his web developer over money. The web developer took the web site offline. But he didn?t stop there. He also took ownership of Dave?s domain. And there was nothing Dave could do about it, because the web developer had listed himself as the administrative contact for the domain when he registered it on Dave?s behalf.

Ouch! It?s one thing to lose a web site; you can rebuild that. But losing a prime domain name, the address at which customers have found you for years? That hurts big time. There?s a search marketing angle to this, too: If you?ve spent several years building up ?search engine trust? in a domain, you?ll have to spend at least the same amount of time re-building trust on a new domain if you have to start over like Dave did.

This story dates back several years, but I?m sure similar stories could be told today. I?ve found over the years that many small business owners don?t appreciate either the value of their domain name or the need to protect it. I?ll focus on the need to protect your domain name in this article.

How to Protect Your Domain Name (i.e., How to Avoid What Happened to ?Dave?)

It doesn?t matter if you register a domain name yourself, or if your web host, web developer, or someone else does it for you. What matters is that you, the small business owner, are listed as the domain owner and main contact person.

When registering a domain, you have to list several contact people..........................