Domain investor here. Some, but not all of the advice here is absolutely dreadful and is an example of why you should not take advice from random strangers on the internet.
Some basic rules if you wish to keep the domain:
* Don't offer to sell the domain. If you are contacted by a prospective buyer, just decline, saying that the domain is not for sale. Don't counter-offer or enter into discussions or negotiations.
* Don't put ads or links to third-party commercial entities on your website. If you're going to use it for business purposes, make sure that it's just for your business, which incorprates your family name, eg FamilyName IT Services Ltd.
* Make sure your website has an "About Me/Us" page, which briefly outlines who you are, ensuring that you mention that your Family Name is the same as the domain name.
* The advice in this thread regarding use of 2FA on everything is sound. I've a high value domain portfolio and receive password reset requests every week, triggered by bad actors trying to access anything that they can think of that might give them access to accounts.
* Don't use GoDaddy or any or their network.
* Read up on UDRP (dispute resolution) and Reverse Name Hijacking if you want to get up to speed on the legal and procedural issues that might affect you.
* Domain disputes are a specialised field and you would need the advice of a specialised lawyer if you find yourself the recipient of a UDRP complaint. John Berryhill (I've no connection) is well regarded in this area, and I'm sure that there are others. He would be my first port of call.
I would add the purpose of half of this advice is to make sure to prevent any possibility your domain possession is viewed as being used to monetise the name association with another legitimate company.
If your name is Apple and you somehow obtain new domain named apple.newtld you have a chance to loose the domain if there is any way it can be seen as profiting off of the association with the APL. For example if you put ads on a page that is nominally your personal page it can be seen as getting traffic from people who mistakenly came to this page since there is very little chance they came legitimately.
If it is large company they will be looking at every possible way to get your domain and the only way to fight it is to either spend huge amount of money on lawyers or not give any pretext, however small.
You are also as likely to lose the domain by a targeted attack by people who hope to then sell the domain. If you have a nice domain name you need to invest a bit of thought in protecting it from takover (locking the domain, protecting your information, not using your regular phone number, phone, email, laptop, etc. to have anything to do with the admin access to the domain).
You are a random stranger on the web giving good advice, though.
And now I am concerned for the domain I use for our family email addresses, which is not related to our last names (well, it has the initials of me and my wife, but then I added a random number to make it available. It's 3 letters domain)
Amazon.se was registered by a 1-person company Amazon AB in 1997. The reason Amazon didn't launch in Sweden until 2020 was because the person who owned Amazon AB didn't want to sell (but finally did).
Since company tax filings are public in Sweden, you can deduct Amazon paid ~$500k for amazon.se, which in my mind is very cheap.
Because they're incompetent. Literally just a week ago a report (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/godaddy-hacke...) just describe how GoDaddy is simply incompetent with security. This is in addition on having one of the worst customer support of all major registrars.
A customer of mine had their website hijacked by Godaddy (copied their website text and pointed to a Godaddy IP). The application stopped working of course because that was hosted elsewhere (with me). They did this because they didn't like what was being sold on the website.
Because they are shady. I wouldn't put it past them to somehow claim they didn't receive renewal payment for the domain then take over ownership of the domain and then charge/sell it for an absurd amount of money.
Some basic rules if you wish to keep the domain:
* Don't offer to sell the domain. If you are contacted by a prospective buyer, just decline, saying that the domain is not for sale. Don't counter-offer or enter into discussions or negotiations.
* Don't put ads or links to third-party commercial entities on your website. If you're going to use it for business purposes, make sure that it's just for your business, which incorprates your family name, eg FamilyName IT Services Ltd.
* Make sure your website has an "About Me/Us" page, which briefly outlines who you are, ensuring that you mention that your Family Name is the same as the domain name.
* The advice in this thread regarding use of 2FA on everything is sound. I've a high value domain portfolio and receive password reset requests every week, triggered by bad actors trying to access anything that they can think of that might give them access to accounts.
* Don't use GoDaddy or any or their network.
* Read up on UDRP (dispute resolution) and Reverse Name Hijacking if you want to get up to speed on the legal and procedural issues that might affect you.
* Domain disputes are a specialised field and you would need the advice of a specialised lawyer if you find yourself the recipient of a UDRP complaint. John Berryhill (I've no connection) is well regarded in this area, and I'm sure that there are others. He would be my first port of call.