Although sellers’ information is controlled by US based eBay Inc. and stored on a US server, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that eBay is nevertheless required to provide this information.

The Globe and Mail reports that Canadians spent about $5 billion online each year, a quarter of which represent eBay’s total sales. However, Statistics Canada reports $39.2 billion CAD spent online in 2005, that’s 38.4% up from 2004.

According to eBay, the site was visited by approximately 11 million Canadians this past August.

The issue of double taxation is sure to become a cumbersome topic, since many sellers auction used goods. Meanwhile companies that sell through eBay may now need to re-evaluate their profit margins.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has sent many news releases on the issue. If you receive a renewal notice, you should contact your current registrar to confirm that your domain name needs renewing.

If you decide to renew your domain(s) by sending a response to one of these renewal notices, note the following:

1. You will likely pay too much for your renewal. Renewal rates that we’ve seen from these mailings are expensive, typically between $25 and $30 US per domain/year. Some will take your payment and not even transfer your domain.
2. You could lose the services being provided by your current registrar. Some registration services providers also provide DNS, email forwarding, hosting, or other services with their domain registrations.
3. You could lose your customer service. Once your domain is transferred to another registrar, your current provider will not be able to provide customer support for your domain.

This is a sample letter you should ignore.

To protect your contact information, your domain registrar should provide WHOIS Privacy service which allows you to retain your domain name without having to expose your personal information to the public.

This is typically how it works:

• Your domain registration information, including the Administrative, Billing, and Technical contacts, are masked with generic data within public WHOIS databases. This way you retain full ownership and privacy of your domain information.
• Requests to view your domain’s contact information are filtered and forwarded to you.
• You decide whether or not to respond.

To enable WHOIS Privacy contact your domain name registrar.

Now that you are aware that this is possible be cautious of your renewal notices.

Visit 9thsphere.com to renew or purchase a Canadian domain name.