ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has added a new transfer policy for generic domain names which will now request the registrant who initiates a transfer from one registrar to another to receive and confirm an email from the present registrar regarding their transfer to the new company. In the past you would only get a confirmation email from the new registrar to whom the domain name is being transferred – however now those emails will come from both fronts – and both will need to be confirmed. ICANN’s transfer policy is in force only for the generic top-level domain names that are overseen by ICANN itself – .COM. .NET, .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ.
So what does all of this accomplish? First off this new transfer policy is aimed at further protecting domain owners from unauthorized transfer attempts. A side effect however is that transfers will now take significantly longer than they used to – alas I would much rather go through a longer transfer period than having a stolen domain name.