domain owner vs primary contact

[scotspine]

quick question [for which there might not be a clear answer]: if a person is the registered owner of a domain, and yet the hosting company has on it's records another person as the primary contact, can the domain owner force the hosting company to deny access to the contact? thanks for any info - or any pointers to legal help which might be able to clarify the matter.
sp

[NickFitz]

To start with, it depends on the domain: .com, .uk, .tv and all the rest are controlled by different organisations, with different procedures. For a .com it probably also depends on which registrar it's with.

[scotspine]

it's a .co.uk

[NickFitz]

it's a .co.uk

The first thing to do is to approach the registrar (the company that originally registered the domain on behalf of the owner), as they can probably change the contact details if you have proof of ownership.

If you have the registration certificate (with the magic number on it) you can change the details yourself online at http://www.nic.uk/registrants/maintain/onlineservices/

As a last resort you may have to contact nic.uk directly, although they make an administrative charge for this, so going through the registrar is your best bet.

As for denying the previous contact access to the actual hosting service: get them taken off the domain registration, contact the hosting provider with proof of ownership, and get them to change the passwords associated with the domain.

[scotspine]

"contact the hosting provider with proof of ownership, and get them to change the passwords associated with the domain."

tried that but they say that they can't do it.

thanks for your help btw...

[NickFitz]

tried that but they say that they can't do it.

On what grounds?

thanks for your help btw...

NP

[RichardCranium]

"contact the hosting provider with proof of ownership, and get them to change the passwords associated with the domain."

tried that but they say that they can't do it.

Oh dear. You're with one of the ex-Pipex companies, yes?

[scotspine]

On what grounds? they say they have to deal with the named contact and that the domain owner has no right of access.

pipex? nope...

[expat]

On what grounds? they say they have to deal with the named contact and that the domain owner has no right of access.

pipex? nope...

Ah. This is some new meaning of "owner" that I have not previously encountered.

[NickFitz]

On what grounds? they say they have to deal with the named contact and that the domain owner has no right of access.

pipex? nope...

Ludicrous - have they never previously encountered the situation where somebody leaves a company without deigning to let them know? I suppose you could tell them that the named contact has been killed in a concrete mixer accident

When you say "named contact", do you mean the contact named in their own records, or the contact named on the nic.uk registry? If the latter, and the hosting provider isn't the registrar, then the registrar can update the registry entry to show a new contact. If the hosting company is also the registrar, and you can't convince them to change the record, then you'll need to go through nic.uk to get them to change the record, and hopefully also administer a slap on the wrist to the registrar.

Have you tried emailing the MD (or equivalent) of the hosting company? It sounds to me like some jobsworth minion is sticking to a system that can't cope with an (only slightly) unusual situation.

If necessary, you could threaten to have the DNS records pointed to a different hosting provider and stop paying them, I suppose. But assuming this is a live site, that could be problematic.