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Advisory: Guidance to Registry Operator regarding escrowing Registrar’s Abuse Contact Information

Version 18 April 2024

This Advisory is intended to provide guidance to registry operators regarding the escrow requirements of the data elements described in sections 8.4.8 and 8.4.9 of the Registration Data Policy.

Definitions:

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

Background

Per section 8.4.8 and 8.4.9 of the Registration Data Policy, Registry Operators MUST escrow the following data elements:

  • 8.4.8. Registrar Abuse Contact Email
  • 8.4.9. Registrar Abuse Contact Phone

Per section 3.1, Specification 2 of the gTLD Base Registry Agreement, RFC8909 and RFC9022 MUST be used as the deposit's format.

RFC9022 does not have dedicated fields for Registrar Abuse Contact Email or Registrar Abuse Contact Phone but there are two generic fields that could be used to satisfy the requirements of section 8.4.8 and 8.4.9 of the Registration Data Policy.

Registrar's Abuse Contact Information escrow plan:

In order to satisfy the requirements of section 8.4.8 and 8.4.9 of the Registration Data Policy, the following actions are required from the Registry Operator: 

  1. Registry Operator MUST escrow the data element "Registrar Abuse Contact Email" in the <email> element described in RFC9022 section 5.4.1.1 or the <csvContact:fEmail> element described in RFC9022 section 5.4.2.1.1.
  2. Registry Operator MUST escrow the data element "Registrar Abuse Contact Phone" in the <voice> element described in RFC9022 section 5.4.1.1 or <csvContact:fVoice> and/or <csvContact:fVoiceExt> elements in RFC9022 section 5.4.2.1.1.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."