Lead Networks, who I mentioned a few weeks ago, have lost their ICANN accreditation.
The ICANN announcement includes some of the details and ICANN are currently seeking expressions of interest from other registrars to take over the portfolio of domains (approximately 70 – 80 thousand names according to ICANN)
According to ICANN Lead Networks was escrowing data, so the registrant details are thought to be both complete and accurate. This makes a very pleasant and welcome change compared to some of the situations that have arisen with previous de-accreditations, where registrant data was not being escrowed and was not supplied by the registrar.
ICANN’s compliance team seems to be working flat out at present, which is probably a good thing for the industry as a whole!
It’s also interesting to note that the number of accredited registrars is dropping, as companies either merge or sell out.
