Verisign has ICANN’s permission to delete every third-level .name domain in existence, the john.smith.name form the registry launched with, along with the email forwarding service that let a registrant receive mail at [email protected]. ICANN’s letters of July 28, 2026 free Verisign to switch both services off after giving registrars at least 90 days’ notice. ICANN’s letter puts the number of affected registrations at approximately 22,000, and adds that the majority are not in use, citing Verisign’s consultations with ICANN. One registrar has already told a customer whose name is paid for through 2040 that it ends in February.

Two registrants have taken the decision to ICANN’s accountability process. Doytchin Spiridonov of the Bulgarian registrar Dom.bg, who holds three third-level names, filed Reconsideration Request 26-2 in June. ICANN’s Ombuds and its Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee have both sided with the organization, and the request now goes to the Board with a recommendation to deny it. Patrik Fältström, head of security at the Swedish registry back-end operator Netnod and a former chair of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee, registered stupid.domain.name on August 17, 2001 and filed his own request, 26-5, on September 5. Neither asks Verisign to keep selling the names. Both ask ICANN to let existing ones live for as long as their owners keep renewing them.

For a hosting company the decision is an operational task. Any customer whose mailbox, DNS zone or account-recovery address sits on a third-level .name domain loses it on the same day, whatever the paid-through date on the invoice, and the registrar rather than Verisign is expected to tell them.

Key facts

  • What ends: third-level .name registrations (RSEP 2026013) and the email forwarding service with its second-level email addresses (RSEP 2026014). Second-level .name domains such as smith.name continue as before.
  • The timeline: Verisign filed both requests on April 15, 2026. ICANN approved them on May 7, posted the approvals on May 8 and issued free-to-deploy letters on July 28. Registrars get a minimum of 90 days’ notice and a reminder at least 30 days before the switch-off.
  • The scale: about 22,000 third-level registrations, out of 95,487 .name domains in ICANN’s May 2026 transactions report. Verisign says most are unused. Spiridonov’s filing notes that nobody has published how that was measured.
  • The security question: once a third-level name is deleted, whoever later registers the parent second-level name controls the namespace beneath it and can recreate the old address. Verisign has committed to a one-year hold only on second-level names tied to deleted email addresses.
  • Where the appeals stand: the BAMC recommended denial of Request 26-2 on August 24, the rebuttal window closed on September 8, and the matter goes to the Board. Request 26-5 was filed on September 5.

A 2001 Design That the Registry No Longer Wants to Run

.name was delegated to Global Name Registry on August 1, 2001 and opened in 2002 with a structure no other generic top-level domain used. Registrants could only buy at the third level; the registry held the family name at the second level and controlled its DNS, so kevin.murphy.name and jane.murphy.name could belong to two unrelated people. Alongside it came a paid email address in the form [email protected], backed by an MX record that Verisign inserts into the zone for the second-level name. Conventional second-level registrations arrived within a few years, and Verisign bought Global Name Registry on October 1, 2008.

The two RSEP filings give the reasons in a sentence each. Third-level registrations go “due to declining usage and limited registrar support of the service.” The email service is a “legacy” product “unique to the .name TLD.” Both filings say the change “will increase efficiency for the operation of the .name TLD.” Verisign told ICANN it had “verbally consulted with a select group of registrars comprising a majority of the user base,” none of whom raised a concern, and met ICANN three times before filing, on October 15, November 4 and December 16, 2025. The BAMC’s account of those meetings confirms the 22,000 figure was on the table from the start.

ICANN’s review took three weeks. The authorizations arrive as letters rather than contract amendments because Verisign and ICANN are negotiating the renewal of the .name Registry Agreement, whose Appendix 11, as Fältström notes, still says .name domains “will be registered … at the second and third level.”

Ninety Days, Then Deletion, and a One-Year Hold That Covers Only Half the Problem

Verisign’s implementation plan is short. After a minimum 90-day notice to registrars that support third-level names, and a reminder at least 30 days before the switch-off, the registry’s EPP interface stops accepting third-level creates and existing third-level registrations are deleted. For the email service the same notice applies, after which the second-level addresses are deleted and their MX records removed from the zone. ICANN’s letters add a footnote that settles who talks to customers: “registrars manage the registrar-registrant relationship(s).”

That is how Neil Fraser learned the date. He has held neil.fraser.name for nearly 25 years, runs his website, his email address and an API server on it, and has paid for it through 2040. His registrar wrote to say the registration ends in February. The RSEP ties the 90-day notice to ICANN’s approval, which came on May 7, and ICANN’s letters of July 28 cleared Verisign to proceed, so a February deletion date is later than any minimum in the documents. Verisign has published no date of its own.

Fraser’s concern, and Fältström’s, is what happens after deletion. A third-level name exists only beneath a second-level name the registry currently holds. If fraser.name later becomes registrable, its new owner can recreate neil.fraser.name and receive mail sent to an address used for account recovery, code signing and device access for a quarter of a century. “Basically, I disappear from the Internet,” Fraser wrote. Fältström’s request notes that references to long-used names “may remain in email addresses, account recovery information, configuration files, links, software, access-control lists, APIs and other systems,” and that he “has not found an analysis of this issue in the published RSEP material.”

The filings address the risk for one service only. RSEP 2026014 says Verisign “will prevent re-registration of the second-level domain names managed by Verisign and associated with the deleted SLD E-mail Addresses for one year from the effective date of discontinuation.” RSEP 2026013, covering the 22,000 third-level names, has no equivalent line; Domain Incite wrote in May that it was not yet clear how Verisign planned to handle the third-level names. A hosting provider should treat one year as the outer limit, after which any parent name a customer relied on is fair game.

“No Effect on the Life Cycle of Domain Names”

The reconsideration requests turn on one answer in Verisign’s form. Asked what effect the change would have on the life cycle of domain names, Verisign wrote: “None. There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names.” Spiridonov argued that ICANN approved the requests without considering material information and in reliance on inaccurate information. The Ombuds, in an evaluation dated July 31, found that “ICANN staff considered all material information” and that ICANN “did not rely on false or inaccurate relevant information.” The BAMC’s recommendation of August 24 reconciles Verisign’s answer with the planned deletions by reasoning that an early termination does not alter the life cycle because a deleted name still passes through the standard stages. It recommends that the Board deny the request.

The committee’s point is narrow. Under the Registry Services Evaluation Policy, ICANN checks only whether a change “could raise significant Security or Stability issues” or “significant competition issues,” and its July 28 letter says the review “does not extend to other potential impacts.” Both registrants call that an accountability gap: ICANN knew 22,000 registrations would end and approved the change through a procedure that, by its own description, cannot weigh what that means for the people holding them. Spiridonov’s submission of September 11 adds that the recommendation “identifies no evidence, methodology, or criteria” behind the claim that most names are unused.

Fältström’s request 26-5, filed on September 5, asks ICANN to reconsider both the May approval and the July authorization. His remedy is the one Spiridonov also landed on: stop new third-level registrations, grandfather the existing ones. “I have no objection to Verisign stopping new registrations,” he writes. “I do object to the termination of domain names that are already registered and in use.”

What a Registrar or Host Has to Do Before the Date

A hosting company that resells .name, or hosts mail and DNS for customers who bought third-level names elsewhere, first has to find out whether it has any. ICANN’s May 2026 transactions report lists 193 registrars in .name, 160 of them with domains under management, and Verisign says a select group of them hold most of the third-level base. A registrar that supports the service will receive Verisign’s notice; a host that merely points a customer’s zone at a third-level name will not, and the customer may not either, since the notice chain stops at the registrar.

The second job is moving whatever depends on the name: the mailbox, every login and recovery address that uses it, DNS records, TLS certificates and API endpoints, all before the deletion rather than after, because the old address may one day answer to someone else. The third is the parent name. A customer who registers the second-level name beneath which their old identity lived closes the recreation risk themselves, and for names the email hold covers they have a year to do it. Nothing in either reconsideration request pauses the deletion while the Board decides; Spiridonov asked for exactly that, and the BAMC did not recommend it.

About the Data

The description of both services, Verisign’s stated reasons, the notice periods and the one-year hold come from Verisign’s two RSEP requests of April 15, 2026 and ICANN’s free-to-deploy letters of July 28, 2026, all posted on ICANN’s RSEP process page. The approval dates, the pre-submission meetings and the quotations from the Ombuds evaluation come from the BAMC recommendation of August 24. Fältström’s and Spiridonov’s positions are quoted from their filings on ICANN’s reconsideration pages for Requests 26-2 and 26-5. The 22,000 figure is Verisign’s; the total of 95,487 .name domains and the count of 192 registrars come from ICANN’s monthly registry reports for May 2026, the latest published. Neil Fraser’s account and the February date come from his own post of September 3, as reported by Domain Name Wire. Fältström’s roles at Netnod and SSAC are as described by Domain Incite. Verisign has published no switch-off date, and this article does not infer one; the February date comes from a single registrar’s notice to one customer, as reported by Neil Fraser.