ICANN Approves Verisign Plan to Delete 22,000 Paid .name Domains by Early 2027

ICANN approved a Verisign request on May 7, 2026, to discontinue all third-level .name domains — addresses in the format first.last.name — affecting roughly 22,000 registrants, some of whom have paid for their domains through 2040. Verisign filed the request on April 15, 2026, citing operational efficiency and declining usage, and the decision only became widely known after a Google engineer's blog post surfaced on September 3, 2026. Deletions are expected to begin around February 2027, following a mandatory 90-day notice period to registrars. The move has drawn sharp criticism because third-level .name domains were originally marketed as a 'Web address for life' when the registry launched in January 2002. Beyond losing websites and email, security researchers warn that abandoned second-level domains could be re-registered by others, potentially intercepting password-reset emails tied to the old addresses.