We spent $20 to achieve RCE and accidentally became the admins of .mobi
https://labs.watchtowr.com/we-spent-20-to-achieve-rce-and-accidentally-became-the-admins-of-mobi/> As part of our research, we discovered that a few years ago the WHOIS server for the .MOBI TLD migrated from whois.dotmobiregistry.net to whois.nic.mobi – and the dotmobiregistry.net domain had been left to expire seemingly in December 2023.
Never ever ever ever let a domain expire. If you're a business and you're looking to pick up a new domain because it's only $10/year, consider that you're going to be paying $10/year forever, because once you associate that domain with your business, you can never get rid of that association.
The next year they decided it was premium after all, and wanted to charge £492,000 for renewal. I still have a screenshot of that, although needless to say I don't own the domain anymore.
ICANN provides some protection for standard gTLD domains, but it's minimal. You're guaranteed identical pricing to all other standard domain registrants on the gTLD, so they can only raise your price by raising the price of everyone else at the same time. That hasn't stopped some registries from 10x price increases though. The only thing it does is ensure they can't single you out and massively hike your renewal fee.
However, that does not apply to registry premium gTLD domains. When you register a registry premium domain you waive those protections and the registries can technically do anything they want.
If you register a ccTLD domain, you're at the mercy of that country's registry. If you register a 3rd level domain you're at the mercy of the 2nd level domain owner and they're regulated by either ICANN or a country based registry.
It's actually somewhat complex when you get into it.
https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/29/technology/google-domain-pu...
How do mega corps remember to pay their domain bills? Do they pay an (overpriced) registrar for "infinity" years of renewals? This seems like a genuinely hard business operations problem.
Please elaborate...
Also, what about personal domains? Does it apply there as well?