Outdated Registry Expiration in WHOIS

Question

I have a valuable .com domain, I renew it two months ago but when I check the WHOIS domain information I got:

Registry Expiration: 2023-09-09 04:00:00 UTC

I contacted the domain registrar and they told me that it's fine, that the only important date is the one in the domain dashboard. This was their reply:

This date in the WHOIS no longer has any meaning for you after a provider change, as the domain was transferred to $REGISTRAR on June 18th, 2013. The current term for this domain is therefore dependent on the time of the transfer (start of contract with $REGISTRAR) and is currently from 06/18/2023 to 06/17/2024. This is stated on the corresponding invoice and in your customer account under "Domains".

I'm worried about this, because the renewal date in their dashboard can change at any time (it's not public data after all). Don't all the registrars have the obligation to keep data in WHOIS updated?

Answer 1

Have you checked the WHOIS through the same provider as where you purchased the domain? That's one suggestion I found:

If you notice this happening, it's because the WHOIS service you're using is inaccurate: it's showing you the central domain name registry's inaccurate expiration date instead of the actual expiration date.

To avoid this problem with ".com" and ".net" domain names, you should always use the WHOIS service provided by the company you bought the domain name from — that's a much better way to see an accurate expiration date.

If that doesn't return any success, I suggest you contact ICANN to see what they recommend:

• ICANN - Global Support Centre
• ICANN - About WHOIS inaccuracies