5 Legal Tips for Protecting Your Online Assets

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If you’re a domainer, you have lots of online assets. But are you properly protecting them? There are a few legal steps you should take to ensure that your online property is secure.

1. Use Good Security

This first tip isn’t really about the law. It’s just common sense.

Use adequate passwords. Keep them in a safe place. Change them often.

All your legal efforts won’t amount to anything if you use passwords like “password” and write them on a sticky note.

2. Pay Attention to Names

Many people form companies for their business purposes, to protect their personal assets. To be effective, your assets have to be owned by the company.

When you buy a domain or a website, you should always make sure the business actually owns it. If you own it personally, your personal creditors could seize it to collect a judgment.

3. Watch Your Agents

If you have given someone else the authority to handle your affairs, they’re your agent. They have legal responsibilities to you in the way they handle your affairs.

To protect yourself and your online assets, be sure to keep an eye on your agents. Agents steal from their employers even when they work in the same office. Think how much easier it would be to steal when everything is online. Make sure they aren’t handling things improperly or stealing from you.

4. Make a List

What will happen to your online assets, if something happens to you? Does your significant other or next of kin know about your online life?

To make it easy for your next of kin to handle your assets, you should at least keep a list of what you own. You could take the extra step of writing out instructions on how to manage your websites, where to access your domain portfolio, etc.

5. Review Your Will

If you’re an adult, you should have a will. And you should review it every five years.

If you executed a will 15 years ago, you probably didn’t even own domains at that time. Your will doesn’t need to specifically mention your online property, but it should properly implement your wishes. Changes in technology are but one reason to review and update your will throughout life.

This is a Guest Post by…
Andrew Flusche, a Virginia lawyer who works with individuals and businesses. He is also a Virginia reckless driving lawyer.

Jim Spencer

Question for the author.

I have been involved with many a business or non-profit that managed to lose their domain name registration credentials.

Registrars verify identity by asking for a fax copy of a photo id of the registrant.

Companies and non-profits are not issued such id's and thus can not be verified as the owner. The result being that the registrar will not provide access to the account. I hope my experience is representative.

How are you recommending one registers a domain name, specifically the registrant name?

Jamie Parks

Word just in that REX.com was swiped form original owner 'Joey Havlock' just hours ago. He had it over at GoDaddy. Wonder how this will turn out. Here's the link on DNForum.com for anyone interested in following along. Joey is in shock.

http://xr.com/domaintheft

Mark

Nice article. Common sense definitely does one well in most cases - but others, such as the will, definitely need to be stated. My family or close friends would have no clue how to handle my domain/online ventures.

Henry Davis

Thanks. some good tips here.

Dhaval Patel

such a great tips about web thanks very good keep it up

Ahmed Elmasry

thanks for the tips

www.Querier.net

shawny

this is really a good tip, the tip number 1 is very useful but i have to add something when making a password you should mix the number and the lessters and it should be more than 10 letters or numbers so that you can really protect from hacking and one thing.

Brandon

I have heared some pretty bad stories with GoDaddy thefts. I had one incident occur but it was not theft. They withheld my domain and said they wanted $450 to keep it on their server or $75 to transfer it out. This was because its a link redirection service and somebody mass emailed with it. As dumb as people are they blamed it on us.

bedava oyun

great article

Nugroho Adi Pratama

for the #5 tips, nice, never cross my mind to give my site/domain as an inheritance.

Ariyes

Hi,

Yes,just with in few days i going to have my own domain!
This is my first article reading about tips for protecting my
online assests and its good to see here!
Any way,thanks for the tips!

Nicholas | pixobyte.com

very Good tips, surely very useful..

bandisusi

Hi...this is good idea. I don't think about it before. Now I will protect my asset more..

Blogger desk

These looks really helpful. With so many hackers on the loose, its really risky in storing data online. But, these tips will really be useful. Thanks for sharing.

Bhajans

Very nice article

Curt

Threat of virus, malware, adware has constantly been a matter of concern for every PC users. By following above security measures one can definitely get rid of those threats.

John D.

The advice about a will is very good. In addition to a will, I keep a written list of my assets, along with their approximate values, in a safe deposit box that my spouse has a key to. Making sure that if you were to pass, your heirs would get your assets is important, but it's also important for them to have some idea of what the assets are worth. When dealing with savings or investment accounts, this is easy, but with online assets, it can be difficult. You'd hate to have a surviving spouse sell a valuable internet property for pennies on the dollar because they have no idea what it's worth.

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