If you're reading this, either you are still using https://neow.in to access the site, or your DNS records are updated to access us properly again.
I was going to write a whole piece regarding this ordeal and how it could have been handled better, but I'm not going to. Fact is: we were in the wrong, not our registrar or ICANN, although I feel our registrar could have handled the whole situation better.
Basically what happened is that our domain was reported to ICANN for inaccuracy of the WHOIS, specifically this part which was protected by "Domain Privacy" so instead of showing a "real" email address, it shows one that is handled by a company that handles privacy.
The problem summary:Domain being reported: neowin.netTime of submission/processing: Mon Jan 27 01:01:30 2014Problem in whois block: Technical Contact--- Error in email: Incorrect email--- Comment: E-mail address doesn't work. This bounces back
More detailed report here.
I registered Neowin in 2000 and the email I used to register it was also the primary contact email address for the account at our registrar, that email hasn't worked for years (the ISP no longer exists) and I just never got around to updating it, because of all the safeguards we have on our account means it's quite a process to get that email address changed. I felt that because our other email addresses attached to the WHOIS were valid and contactable that is was no big deal, wrong!
So while I feel this could have been handled better by our registrar, because we have several email addresses in our account that can be used to contact us, and because I was unaware that updating a support ticket actually pushed the ticket back down the queue, ultimately the fault lies with me.
ICANN is apparently requiring from 1 Jan 2014 that WHOIS information is accurate and up to date, if it isn't and they send a complaint to your registrar, one of the stipulations is that your domain can be suspended within a timeframe of their choosing, but within 14 days. We hold 17 domains at our registrar who gave us 72 hours to respond, at another registrar we hold an additional three domain names and they give five days notice to respond.
What kind of sucks though is that I was able to register and manage all these domains under an email address that wasn't contactable for over a decade. Our registrar also let me know they were currently dealing with an unusually high volume of calls to their support desk, I guess we aren't the only ones that are dealing with this.
So I apologize for the outage, our WHOIS is now accurate and up to date.
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