What is the difference between the administrative, billing, and legal owner contacts?
When you sign up for our service or update your contact information, you can enter three separate contacts.
- Administrative Contact: This is the person responsible for day-to-day operation of the account. We send all messages about the account to this e-mail address, including "lost password" messages. If you don't specify a separate billing contact or legal owner, the administrative contact is also considered to be the billing contact and legal owner. Be sure to enter a company name or organization name if appropriate.
- Legal Owner (aka "Registrant"): This optional contact names a separate person or organization that owns the rights to the account. If your domain name is registered through our company, this contact is the "registrant" referred to in the domain name agreement. We don't normally contact the owner directly. However, the owner has the right to contact us and replace the administrative contact at any time, and if we receive conflicting instructions from the administrative contact and the owner, we will follow the owner's instructions. If you're managing the domain name on behalf of someone else, you should put your name as the "administrative contact" and the other person's name as the "legal owner" to preserve the other person's rights. Again, be sure to enter a company name or organization name if appropriate.
- Billing Contact: This optional contact names a separate person who pays for the account. Billing-related e-mail messages are sent to both the administrative contact and the billing contact. A separate billing contact does not have any legal rights to the account. For example, he or she cannot ask us to reset the password and cannot take control of an account against the wishes of the administrative contact or legal owner, regardless of how much he or she has paid for it. In the event of an ownership dispute, the rights of a separate billing contact are limited to a refund of the fees he or she has paid.
(You might also occasionally see references to a "technical contact". The technical contact is always Tiger Technologies in the case of domain names for which we provide DNS service, which includes almost all domain names registered through our company. If we don't provide DNS service for your domain name and you wish to change the technical contact, please contact us.)
