I just changed the email in the owner field in namecheap. I did not receive a confirmation email. (At the old one, I did to the new one)
> Ultimately, in case of domain theft/dispute or similar, the domain's owner record has highest authority.
I would highly suspect in a court of law that is not true. You see, you have a contract with the registar for the domain. You can put whatever information you want there it doesn't change your contract with the registar. That is why your registar account is important.
> "I would highly suspect in a court of law that is not true."
OK, but why, and in what court and in what legal system?
> "You see, you have a contract with the registar for the domain."
It's not the registrar that sells the domain. They are brokers between registrant and the entity owning the TLD, and registrars also have domestic laws to abide to.
> "You can put whatever information you want there ..."
No you can't, not in European nations part of the EU. While not legally enforced, registrars based here are required to request and urge customers to put accurate and truthful information there. Some of them (e.g. OVH) even require personal identification documents in order to register a domain. In my case, with my .se domain, I cannot change anything in the contact records without providing verifiable identification data - part of which goes into my contact records.
I mean, I literally went and changed the email on a domain to check if what you said was true. And validated that your claim was false.
Secondly, contracts are a thing. I am not sure why you think that you would have a contract with the registar is something that is guess work or made up. I'm also confused as to why contract law 101 isn't a thing you know.
> OK, but why, and in what court and in what legal system?
Why? Because contracts are a thing. And pretty much all of them. You know the first thing a judge will ask if it's being question who owns a domain? Who paid for it. The second thing will ask is what registar account it belongs to. The email address on the domain record would get ignored for the more important aspects that obtain to the fundamentals of law. It's like if you pay for a book but someone else writes their name on it. The judge isn't going to say "Oh but he wrote his name on it."
So many people think that judges care about small little details. They don't the case would be happened quickly and swiftly. It would be a minor case and the judge would literally ask basic information to obtain who owns it. Paying for it and having it in your domain regsitar account would statsify them that it belongs to you. If you honestly think a judge would listen to a claim of "But your honor my client came into possession of this email address and that email address is listed as a contact email for a domain so it belongs to my client" I don't really know what to tell you. It's not how the world works.
> It's not the registrar that sells the domain. They are brokers between registrant and the entity owning the TLD, and registrars also have domestic laws to abide to.
So here is how contracts work. You have a contract with the registar and they have a contract with the registery. There are obivously some clauses in there. But there will not be a clause that allows them to transfer that domain to another user/registar without your approval and that often comes from you going to their site and requesting the transfer code. And I don't remember when I did a transfer I had to confirm the email on the record.
> No you can't, not in European nations part of the EU. While not legally enforced, registrars based here are required to request and urge customers to put accurate and truthful information there.
That legally enforced part is a major thing. And request and urging is different from requiring. In fact, go do some whois and I'll be you find you can't find the information for any of domains you whois since they have whois privacy.
Quite simply, the idea that forgetting to update an email in a domain record means someone else owns your domain is ignorant of the law and how thing things work.
