Changing domain name - major security issue
I'm considering changing my domain name, which I've had for the past ~5 years, for a couple of reasons:
- Prices have gone up nearly 50% of the tld I'm using.
- I want to switch to .com
During the years I have used emails from my domain to register at dozens of sites and services, now when these changes take place, all of my accounts are open to potential theft if someone buys my old domain.
Manually changing my email in all the services is not really an option because I can not possibly remember every account I made.
I realize the chances of this happening are quite slim but I don't like chances.
Is there anything I could do?
Unfortunately no. Once you give up a domain whomever purchases it next has complete control.
If this were not the case, you might be restricted from accepting mail on a new domain you purchase if the previous owner didn't want you to.
Make sure you understand the difference between "registering" a domain-name, provisioning domain-name service for it, and actually running a mailserver or hosting content in it.
It may be that you're paying for a package that includes domain-name registration, nameserving, webhosting, and mail, and you could save money by dealing with a different registrar for the registration, using a service like DynDNS or Amazon Route 53 for nameserving, and running a forwarding-only email service on the old domain. Whatever hosting provided you use for the .com domain can probably accept e-mail for additional domains, or you could using something like Amazon SES, currently free for the first 1000 incoming e-mail messages per month.
And the registrar may offer you a chance to lock the current rate in for 5 years, not just another year. That should give you time for a long-term plan as well.
But some of the newer gTLDs are more expensive to register or reregister a domain in. According to Compare Prices of All Top-Level Domains, the most-expensive TLD is currently .hoteles, about $65000 to register and about $71500 to renew. If you have an important personal or business e-mail address in a vanity TLD like that, you're tied down to it. However, if you have a really valuable domain (in that TLD, or anywhere), you might monetize it by selling it, but make sure the contract specifies that the new owner (and any subsequent assignees) will forward and not store e-mail sent to certain addresses, during some specified period.