More and more restaurants are having web sites, putting their identity online for all to see and utilize, not realizing that they can easily lose it and potentially never get it back.
A new client of Takeout Online owns a beautiful Mexican restaurant. He signed up with some company, who undoubtedly overcharged him for services and built a nice little web site. They also charged him about 20 times in hosting fees compared to today's norm. We at Takeout Online are interested in making money, of course, but not by using mob techniques to accomplish it, so we informed the gentleman of his options. He gladly agreed to switch to our proposed host and indicated that the company he dealt with originally is no longer in business (surprise, surprise).
When we tried to figure out how to move his site to the new host - we ran into a problem. His domain was registered (and paid for) with domainsbyproxy.com, which is an organization that keeps such info private. Contacting godaddy, the company that was the registrar didn't accomplish anything and we were told to contact domainsbyproxy people. Contacting them didn't accomplish anything and we were told to contact ICANN. Contacting them didn't accomplish anything and they referred us back to domainsbyproxy, although after actually paying attention to what we indicated as transpired - their recommendation was to get a lawyer.
Of course originally contacting the first two entities resulted in us filling out a form, attaching a copy of the owner's driver's license as well as business license. None of that helped - the domain was hijacked and we had no way to get it back.
This was almost beyond belief. The domain had a hyphenated name, first part being an atypical Mexican word and second being the name of the mall where this restaurant is situated, which is also a very unusual name. Why in the world would anyone, other than this restaurant, be interested in the name, since it's absolutely useless to anyone else. This makes no sense at all, yet the domain is hijacked and our only recourse was to get a lawyer involved, which of course isn't worth the cost and hassle involved.
So, even though plenty of people know of this site and there's a really nice banner on the window of the restaurant informing everyone of the domain name - it'll all have to be changed now.
The moral of the story is - if you're a restaurant owner - do NOT trust ANY third party to handle your affairs behind your back and then be sorry, as in the example above. Make sure that whoever does your registrations, web site etc. clearly shows you the WHOIS information sheet with your name and contact information being the Administrative Contact. If they claim they have to put someone else there - deal with someone else, there's absolutely NO reason why they can't. They can be a Technical Contact for you, but you MUST BE the Administrative Contact. Have them provide you with the name of the hosting company they're using, as well as login information to the Control Panel for that company and verify that you indeed can log in. If you ever sever your relationship with these people - change the login password before severing the relationship, so nobody can harm you via your web site as an afterthought.
Protect yourself and your identity. Just as you wouldn't trust strangers with your wallet, don't trust them with your web site implicitly. There certainly are reputable companies that will do good by you, but since you don't know who they are - always verify and make sure to keep the main control, so that if you need to change companies, for any reason, your online assets will not get hijacked.
