Loading ...Controversy is brewing around one of Australia’s newest official domain name registrars – UK –owned SafeNames Ltd and especially the web page re-direction services of its SafeAgent business.
SafeNames and a German company InternetX, have recently been added to the list of officially accredited domain name registrars on the Australian Domain Administration Ltd (AuDA) web-site.
But SafeNames is already in trouble. An announcement on the auDA web-site dated 7th December reveals that the company has breached its registrar agreement.
Moreover the announcement reveals that SafeNames has been ignoring AuDA’s requests to stop registering Au domain names for ineligible foreign companies and stop registering domain names for its SafeAgent re-direction service.
auDA’s statement said that because SafeNames has ignored its requests, auDA has deleted all the domain names in question.
AuDA also said it is monitoring any new names the company registeres to ensure they don’t break the rules.
A quick Google search suggests that ecarrentals.com.au, registered by SafeAgent on behalf of UK car rental company Traveljigsaw, is one of the offending domain names.
The page which re-directed visitors to ecarrentals.com.au, and which indicated the re-direction was being managed by SafeAgent Ltd, is now only available via the Google cache.
And the whois entry for ecarrentals.com.au suggests that the domain name is about to be deleted.
Visitors to safeagent.com.au will see that the company lists registration of domain names as one of the ways it uses to support its web-traffic generating business.
AuDA’s rules are intended to preserve Au domain names for genuine web-sites, and so presumably this is where SafeNames has got itself into trouble.
Even so, the affair is embarrassing for auDA given that it has only recently accredited the UK company, making it just one of only twenty-nine highly valuable accreditations given to businesses to sell au domain names.
eCommerce Report attempted to contact SafeNames via the Sydney Australia location it claims on its web-site. ( The company’s head office is in the UK and it also claims to have a US office in Virginia). But we couldn’t find an address or phone number for a SafeNames Sydney office.
We did, however, see a Brisbane phone number listed for the company’s Asia-Pacific regional sales office. Our call had not yet been returned as this issue went to press.
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