Updating Your Account and Contact Details Print

Three layers, and who can change what

Your account is made up of three distinct things, and knowing which is which explains why some changes you can make yourself and others need us:

• The account profile is the legal account holder, the business or person the services actually belong to.
• Users are the people who can log in, each with their own email address and password, and their own permissions.
• Contacts receive copies of emails but cannot log in at all, covered in our article on adding extra contacts and users.

What you can change yourself

Logged in to your client portal, you can update your own user details including your name, phone number, and the email address you log in with. You can add, edit, and remove users and contacts, and adjust what each of them is permitted to do or receive. All of this takes effect immediately.

Any new email address must be verified before it works properly. A verification email goes to the new address, and until you confirm it, that address cannot be used for password resets, as explained in our article on why we ask a security question. Verify it the day you change it, rather than discovering the problem when you are locked out.

What requires a support ticket

The primary email address on the account profile cannot be changed from the client portal. It belongs to the legal account holder, and changing it requires a member of our staff to do it manually after verifying the request. Open a support ticket to have it changed.

This is deliberate friction. The profile email is the anchor of your entire account, and an attacker who could quietly redirect it would own everything downstream of it. Making that one change a human conversation rather than a button is the point.

LTE and SIM-based services: FICA requirements

Our LTE products involve a SIM card, which brings them under FICA, so changes to those accounts carry requirements the rest of our services do not:

• Changing the name or contact details on an LTE service requires proof of identity.
• Changing the address additionally requires proof of residence.

This applies only to LTE. Hosting, domains, and Fibre are not affected. It is a legal obligation rather than a policy of ours, and we cannot process the change without the documents, so sending them with your ticket saves a round trip.

Your domain's registrant details

Every domain we register is registered for and on behalf of you. You are the legal owner, and we are the manager, which is the correct arrangement and the one you should insist on from any provider.

On most domains under our management, the administrative email address is set to our own domains address rather than yours, and there is a specific reason for it: domain-related fraud relies on official-looking emails about transfers and renewals, and clients receiving them directly have no easy way to tell a genuine registry notice from a convincing fake. Routing them to us means we field them, verify them, and pass on only what is real. It also means we are notified whenever a transfer request is raised against one of your domains, which is a safeguard in itself. Under POPIA, no identifying details of yours appear on public WHOIS lookups in any case, our article on WHOIS and registrant details covers what is and is not visible.

To change the ownership details on a domain, open a support ticket. Because ownership is a legal matter rather than a preference, expect us to verify the request properly before acting on it.

Who we will take instructions from

We act on account instructions from one place: the primary profile email address. A request arriving from that address is a request from you. A request arriving from anywhere else is a request from a stranger until proven otherwise, and we will require certified proof of identity before acting on it. If neither is provided, we make no changes to any aspect of the account, and no exceptions are made because a request is urgent or sounds reasonable.

This comes up most often with third parties. Clients hire developers, designers, and IT specialists, and those people contact us asking for a DNS change, a transfer, a password, or access. We do not know them, and we have no way to confirm they still work for you, so we refuse and ask for an email from you at your registered address. If that has ever felt obstructive, consider the alternative: anyone who learns your domain name being able to phone us and redirect your business.

The practical version of this: if someone is working on your website, send us one email from your primary address telling us who they are and what they may request. That takes a minute and saves everyone the back and forth later.

Keeping your details current is your responsibility

We are happy to make changes for you, but maintaining accurate contact and billing information on your account is yours to own, and it matters more than it sounds. Everything downstream depends on it: renewal reminders arriving, password resets working, transfer approvals reaching the right person, and our ability to confirm you are who you say you are when something goes wrong.

The situation that causes the most damage is a specific one, and it is worth naming. A developer or agency registers a domain and hosting on behalf of their own client. The relationship later ends. The invoices keep arriving at the developer's address, nobody pays them, and when the domain is about to lapse the end client tells us they never signed up for anything and owe us nothing.

The account holder on record is the party responsible for the account, and the details on it are whatever they were last set to. If a domain or hosting service is being run for you by someone else, make sure the account is in your name, with your email address on the profile, before the relationship ends rather than after. And if you are the developer, transfer the account to your client's own profile when you hand the work over. Both sides sleep better.

Good to know

When someone leaves your business, removing their user access is exactly as important as granting it was. A former employee's login is a live key to your hosting, your invoices, and potentially your support correspondence. Review your users and contacts whenever your team changes, and if you would rather we did the removal for you, a ticket from your primary address takes care of it.