.name Domain Termination: ICANN Approves Deleting Third-Level Domains

Software engineer Neil Fraser has published an account of a decision that will remove his personal domain from the internet: ICANN has approved Verisign's plan to abolish the entire third level of the .name top-level domain, affecting every address of the form xxx.yyy.name — including neil.fraser.name, which Fraser registered almost twenty-five years ago.

What Verisign proposed and ICANN approved

On 15 April 2026 Verisign proposed the destruction of the whole third level of the .name hierarchy in order to simplify its administration. On 28 July 2026 ICANN approved the action. Fraser writes that he learned about it a few days ago, when his registrar emailed him. He states that the proposal contained numerous false statements, and links that to a long-standing distrust of the company — one of his original reasons for choosing .name was that the registry was run by Global Name Registry and not by Verisign. Verisign acquired that registry a few years later.

How third-level .name differs from *.uk.co

Third-level domains carry a dubious reputation, Fraser notes, because many were resold by intermediaries who bought a second-level name and then sold subdomains beneath it; if the operator disappears, so does everything he sold. The .name space was different: it was set up exclusively as a third-level operation, in which anyone can register xxx.yyy.name through any registrar and a full whois record exists, comparable to *.ny.us or *.co.uk.

What is lost, and what could follow

According to Fraser, his website vanishes in February despite being registered and paid for until 2040. His email address disappears with it, and IoT devices that use services on the domain become bricks. He says he is one of 22,000 people who will lose their domains.

The larger risk, in his account, concerns the second-level names left vacant afterwards. If someone other than him registers fraser.name, they would be able to recreate and control neil.fraser.name: hijacking accounts linked to that address, committing code with his authentication and seizing control of connected devices. Since the address has been in use for a quarter of a century, there is no way to enumerate every online and offline account opened with it. Fraser closes by saying it is time to lawyer up.