(this is an FYI post for affected and interested parties; Resellers who were directly affected by the issue described herein will be contacted with specific details)
As some of you may be aware, Verisign recently applied a 'bug fix' to a number of domains that resulted in the removal of a year that was applied erroneously by Verisign during registrar transfers that occurred under specific circumstances prior to April 19, 2001. Essentially, any name that was transferred to another registrar in the 45 days following the domain's expiry date was given two years in the transfer instead of one. Verisign corrected this behavior in April, 2001, but did not apply the data fix to any affected domains until October 10, 2001. The removal of years resulted in names in varying states, including: a) deleted b) expired but not deleted, c) names VERY close to expiry, d) names missing a year, but not very close to expiry. Tucows has been dealing with this issue since we became aware of it, and we have taken steps to ensure that NO registrant affected is in any danger of losing their name. We have worked with Verisign, who were very helpful, to reclaim any names that were deleted and re-registered by other registrars. We have also worked with any Tucows resellers, who were very understanding, who had registered names they assumed were rightfully available, to explain the situation and reclaim the names. I'm happy to say that all such names have now been returned to the appropriate Resellers/Registrants and all Resellers have been notified. We have also been granted an especially long grace period to deal with any names that expired as a result of the Verisign 'fix', since we understand (and were able to make Verisign understand) that our Resellers would need time to communicate this to their registrants. All resellers who have names affected by this will be contacted with complete lists of the names and the states they're in; we appreciate everyone's patience as it's taken a while to sort this issue out. A final note; I'm putting together an informational web page that describes the issue in full, including resulting domain states; once it's ready, I'll post the URL and you can check it out at your convenience. Thanks, Ken
