Our focus is on providing a safe and secure .uk. A key element of ensuring our stakeholders can trust in the integrity of .uk is by ensuring that the information held for the registrant of a domain name is true and up to date. The provision of accurate registrant data is an increasingly important area of focus with registries worldwide working to combat fraudulent domain name use.

We have always required domain name holders to provide accurate and up to date information in the form of a correct registrant name and postal address. Failure to do this means a registrant risks losing their domain name. 

In 2010 we launched a new initiative to look at how we can work with registrants and registrars to further improve the quality of data provided. This initiative considers each element of the registration process:

• We have been assessing how our registration systems impact on data quality and have identified a number of areas where changes will result in an improvement in the quality of registrant data that we capture.
• We are also working with our registrars to improve data quality.  For example, we have carried out mystery shopping exercises which have helped us to identify situations which confuse domain name applicants into entering the wrong information when registering a domain or result in the incorrect use of the WHOIS opt out.
• We are working with third parties to validate the registrant data that we hold by verifying that data against publicly available registers (Companies House, Electoral Role etc).
• We are working through those records that cannot be validated or can be identified as unacceptable to improve it.

Data Validation

We are working with third parties to validate the registrant data that we hold by verifying that data against publicly available registers such as Companies House, Electoral Role etc. Some data may show as Invalid Name or Address as the data could not be validated using these sources. An example of this might be foreign organisation names and addresses or trading names of unregistered companies.

If the data is showing as invalid during the registrant trial data update window, but you believe this to be correct, please contact our Customer Services Team on 01865 332222 to discuss this further.

What does this mean for me?

As a registrar you are responsible for providing good quality data on your customers.  You have a pivotal role in gathering accurate registrant data from your customers.  You may also get contacted by customers who have concerns about domains they have come across on the internet.  Our data quality team will contact you if there are any domains or registration behaviours that they think need to be reviewed and we are available to support any queries you have about the contact details provided for any domains which you think may need further investigation on our part.

Next steps

We will work with registrars to ensure good data is captured at registration and renewal and that the necessary updates are made to the register.  This is done by registrars through our registry systems.  We are also investigating the provision of validation mechanism at registration and renewal to support our registrars in providing good data.

In March we will start to actively contact registrants whose data cannot be verified or appears to be incorrect.  We will ask them to verify their registration details with us.  This will be an ongoing programme to help us improve the quality of .uk domain name registration details.
 
If registrants receive a request from Nominet to verify their registration details they can do so through their online account with us.  Registrants can also use their online account to correct any inaccurate information that they notice when searching for their domain on our public WHOIS domain search tool. Registrants can access their online account at http://www.nominet.org.uk/go/login.

Registrars can also assist us by ensuring the domain name registration and contact details for their customers are accurate and up to date. 


In April we will be introducing registrant name restrictions on registrations and domain name transfers. We will be introducing the following restrictions:

1. The registrant name must contain 4 or more characters (any)
2. The registrant name must contain 3 or more characters (a-z)

In May we will be opening a trial data update window. Having completed work to validate the registrant name and address for each record in the register it will be possible, while the window is open, to update/correct the registrant name for records that we have not been able to validate through our registration systems.
Details of registrant name restrictions and registrar data initiatives can be found on our Development Roadmap. Further communications around each initiative will follow.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our registrars for their continued cooperation and support in improving the quality of registrant data that we hold.  The high quality of our register sets us apart from many other TLDs and we will continue to work to improve the .uk database.