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Frequently asked questions

  • I am looking for a domain name registrant. Where can I look it up?

    The Whois is an easy-to-use tool for checking the availability of a .nl domain name. If the domain name is already taken, you can see who has registered it.

    On the page looking up a domain name you will find more information about what a domain name is, how the Whois works and how the privacy of personal data is protected. Alternatively, you can go straight to look for a domain name via the Whois.

  • I would like to transfer my domain name to another registrar. What is the procedure?

    To get your domain name transferred, you need the token (unique ID number) for your domain name. Your existing registrar has the token and is obliged to give it to you within five days, if you ask for it. The procedure for changing your registrar is described on the page transferring your domain name.

  • The details registered about me/my company are incorrect or out of date. How can I get them updated?

    To update the contact details associated with your domain name, you need to contact your registrar. Read more about updating contact details.

  • Why is my domain name in quarantine?

    When a domain name is cancelled, we aren't told the reason, so we can't tell you. You'll need to ask your registrar. The advantage of quarantine is that, if a name's cancelled by mistake, you can always get it back.

    One common reason is that the contract between you and your registrar says you've got to renew the registration every year. If you haven't set up automatic renewal and you don't renew manually, the registration will expire.

  • Ik heb een klacht over mijn provider/registrar. Kan ik daarvoor bij SIDN terecht?

    Wanneer je een klacht hebt over of een geschil met je registrar dan zijn er verschillende mogelijkheden om tot een oplossing te komen. Hierover lees je meer op pagina klacht over registrar. SIDN heeft geen formele klachtenprocedure voor het behandelen van een klacht over jouw registrar.

  • What conditions do I have to meet as a registrar?

    Would you like to be able to register domain names for customers or for your own organisation by dealing directly with SIDN? If so, you can become a .nl registrar. Read more about the conditions and how to apply for registrar status on the page becoming a registrar.

More frequently asked questions

Travel organisations are the summer's preferred phishing target

The holiday season has started

At the end of May, Kaspersky was already warning in a blog: the Travelphishing Season is now open. Since early summer, more and more spammers and phishers around the world have been posing as travel organisations to trick consumers into giving them money and personal data. In many cases, lookalike domain names are used. We wanted to know whether the Netherlands was affected as well, so we carried out our own analysis. Using the SIDN BrandGuard, we looked for evidence of issues associated with the names of four of the country's biggest online travel service providers. Were their brand names being abused and, if so, how? What risks were consumers exposed to?

Analysis of four leading brands

Our analysis involved looking for .nl domain names similar to four well-known brands: Sunweb, Corendon, Vakantiediscounter and Prijsvrij. We discovered 617 lookalikes. It's not surprising that there are so many similar names in use, because some of the brands are based on fairly generic Dutch words. Eighty-six of the 617 domain names we found proved to be registered by the brand owners, their holding companies or subsidiaries. Legitimate registrations, in other words, probably made for defensive reasons, or with new services in mind. A further twelve domain names were held by legitimate partner companies, such as local travel agencies (e.g. corendonvliegvakanties.nl).

Five hundred brand name lookalikes

So just over five hundred domain names were unaccounted for. Most resembled the name Sunweb, which is of course based on highly generic words. Many of those had no obvious link to the travel industry. Names such as sumweb.nl or punweb.nl are likely to have quite different associations in a consumer's mind. We didn't find nearly as many domain names resembling Prijsvrij, Corendon or Vakantiediscounter: about forty in each case. A large proportion of them appeared to be trying to cash in on an established brand's reputation, as with wwwprijsvrij.nl.

Lookalikes mainly after advertising revenue

Those domains were being used for fairly benign purposes. Most of the associated webpages simply carried Google ads for the brand itself, which visitors could click to reach the travel company's site. The incentive for setting up a page like that is to earn kickback fees from Google: the travel company pays Google for every visitor who clicks on one of its ads, and the page host gets a cut.

Abuse is often invisible

None of the websites we came across were clearly being used for phishing. However, it's important to remember that we can't tell by scanning a website whether a domain name is being used for spam. And why, for example, is the domain corendonn.nl -- which simply redirects Corendon's own site -- registered to an anonymous party in Luxembourg?

Travel companies are advised to actively monitor for brand abuse

Many of our finds raised the same question: why does a domain with an innocent-looking website have a registrant whose name doesn't match the company name? We certainly can't exclude the possibility that the domains in question have been registered for spamming or phishing. What's more, our scan reveals the picture at a particular moment in time. And the use of a domain can change overnight. Travel companies would therefore do well to actively monitor for brand abuse.

Article by:

Michiel Henneke

Michiel Henneke

Marketing Manager