Inside Hover: Compliance Department

As you may know, Hover is a part of Tucows, an international domain name registrar. Like Hover, there are thousands of other domain name registrars around the world. The compliance department here at Tucows is responsible for making sure all comply with all the rules and regulations set out by ICANN. I sat down with Sara Scruton of the compliance department to learn more about what it’s like to work in the Compliance department at Tucows. :)

What is your job title/department?
My Job title is Compliance Officer and I work in the Compliance department.

What does your department do here at Tucows?
We ensure our resellers stay compliant with our reseller agreement, and ICANN rules and regulations. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Essentially, ICANN coordinates and regulates domain names. We deal mainly legal issues surrounding domains names as opposed to technical issues.

What are some of these ‘issues’ you see come up?
We work with registrars and registries dealing with issues of fraud, whois issues and transfer issues, we assist various security organizations with domains that might be phishing or spamming, or involved in fraudulent activity.

FOA Requests: When a registrant feels their domain was transferred into Tucows from another registrar incorrectly, they can contact the previous registrar and ask for an FOA (form of authorization).

A recurring issue we have is people that register domain names and do not register the domain in their own name. It is very important when a domain is registered the registrant is listed in the whois, so it will prevent ownership issues in the future.

What are your daily activities in the Compliance Department?

Our daily activities include:

Ensuring resellers comply with our reseller agreement, and ICANN rules and regulations.

Receiving international court orders, subpoenas, cease and desist letters and communicating with law enforcement agencies about various issues.

Another major function of our department is responding to complaints from ICANN

We also receive many emails on a daily basis to our general compliance queue compliance@opensrs.net . Issues we receive include assisting registrants that may have issues with support from their reseller, and may not know who their reseller is, expired domains, redemption process, retrieval of user name and passwords, transferring domains and general help and guidance on how domain names work.

What is one thing people don’t know about domain policy?

It is very important that when a domain is registered that the registrant enters accurate whois information into their domain.

What makes your job interesting?

The internet is always evolving from changes in legislation to policy and procedures being updated. There is always something new to be learned.

How does your department & decisions made affect Hover?
Hover, a reseller of Opensrs, like any of our resellers is affected by any new policy changes implemented by ICANN. The Compliance department assists, informs and enforces any new changes that have been made.

What is the most challenging part of your job?
Explaining to people what it is we do!