# Searching for Name Registrars

## Guidelines

### Check the Acceptable Use Policy:

# Does this registrar censor political or religious speech? How does it define offensive content?

# If censorship is required by law, find a provider that insists upon a legal court order before it censors.

# What is the registrar's abuse policy? Do they notify us first to give us time to respond, before shutting off our services?

# Does the registrar have any restrictions on: IRC, email, game servers, VPNs, DNS servers, torrents and filesharing

### Other Important Criteria:

# Which country is this registrar legally operating in?

# How long has this registrar been operating?

# Does it have a good reputation?

# Can you easily reach customer support?

# What payment options do they accept? Cryptocoins, bank transfers, and mail-in cash payments are often important

Send an email to customer support and ask them a few of these questions. If the customer support is friendly and helpful, you can continue researching. If they ignore your questions or are unhelpful, you should find another registrar. If they aren't helpful before the purchase, you can be certain they will be unhelpful afterwards when they already have your money.

## Domains

A mixture of .com, .net, .org [top-level domains](/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_level_domains) and localized country-code TLDs like .uk, .pk, .in, .cn, .ru, .my, .ph may be helpful. By spreading out and increasing the diversity of domain registrations in different countries, it makes our network more difficult to censor.

You might consider avoiding commercially owned TLDs owned by Donuts, Google, Amazon, Afilias, and Uniregistry. These new domains such as .network, .chat, and .talk are owned by private companies who may be able to censor arbitrarily at any time. Private corporations offer fewer legal guarantees.

## Free Providers

Free providers such as [FreeDNS](/https://freedns.afraid.org/) are commonly used on IRC

Free providers are not recommended because they lack a service guarantee, and you don't legally "own" the domain. Your domains could be revoked at any time.

Free providers are fun to play with, but it's not recommended to rely on them for serious work on IRCNow.

## Country-level Registrars

**WARNING**: May have privacy/censorship concerns

|| [[https://dot.ph]] || Phillipines || Official ||

|| [[https://mynic.my]] || Malaysia || Official ||

|| [[https://www.hkdnr.hk/]] || Hong Kong || Official ||

|| [[https://www.traficom.fi/]] || Finland || Official ||

|| [[https://www.nominet.uk/]] || UK || Official ||

|| [[https://cctld.ru/]] || Russia || Official ||

|| [[http://www.cnnic.cn/]] || China || Official ||

|| [[https://www.sidn.nl/]] || Netherlands || Official ||

|| [[http://www.isoc.org.il/]] || Israeli || Official ||

|| [[http://www.thnic.co.th/]] || Thailand || Official ||

|| [[https://www.nic.tr/]], [[http://isoc.org.tr/]] || Turkey || Official ||

|| [[https://www.auda.org.au/]], [[https://afilias.com.au/]] || Australia || Official ||

|| [[https://www.registry.in/]] || India || Official ||

|| [[http://registro.br/]] || Brazil || Official ||

|| [[https://punto.pe/]] || Peru || Official ||

|| [[https://www.pknic.net.pk/]] || Pakistan || Official ||

|| [[http://www.nic.cu/]] || Cuba || Official ||