Hosting services: changing or leaving your web host

Crates 01 to 04What goes in each crate

1. 01

   Files and records

   The site’s pages and images, and any business records kept beside them. For electronic records the ATO’s ruling says: “If your system changes over time, the original data must still be capable of being reconstructed.”

   Records through a move

2. 02

   Mail

   Addresses at your domain depend on it. auDA warns that while a lapsed .au licence sits in its 30-day grace period, the website and email services stop working.

   The cutover

3. 03

   Database

   Customer details, enquiries and orders. The OAIC’s guidelines say that a business covered by the Privacy Act which outsources the storage of personal information, and keeps the right to access and amend it, still holds that information.

   Data back, data gone

4. 04

   Domain name

   A .au name is held under a licence, and auDA’s rules state that a person does not legally ‘own’ a domain name. Moving the licence from one registrar to another carries no transfer fee under those rules.

   Transferring a .au domain

Items 1 to 6The sheets in this manifest

1. Transferring a .au domain

   Changing registrar, changing registrant, the authorisation code and when a transfer is blocked.

2. Auto-renewals and contract terms

   The kinds of terms the Australian Consumer Law lists as possibly unfair, read with a hosting plan in mind.

3. Getting your data back, and deleting it

   What the OAIC asks about retrieving data at the end of a contract and confirming it is destroyed.

4. Keeping business records through a move

   The ATO’s four requirements for electronic records, and how a change of system meets them.

5. A safe cutover

   Accounts, codes and access on the day a site changes hands.

6. When a business closes its site

   The domain licence, the records and the personal information, after trading stops.

Before the old account closesSix lines to tick

Each line comes from one of the sheets above, in the order this manifest takes them.

• Ask for the domain’s transfer authorisation code. auDA notes it is a separate thing from the username and password for your account with the provider.
• Open the export. Among its questions for cloud users, the OAIC asks: “Is your data stored in a format you will be able to access or use if you need to retrieve it or amend it?”
• Keep tax records readable. The ATO says most records are kept for 5 years, a period that generally runs from when the record was made or obtained, or from when the transaction was completed, whichever is later.
• Ask the old provider to confirm that your information, and its backups, have been destroyed once the contract ends: another of the OAIC’s questions.
• Change the domain’s authorisation code after it reaches the new registrar. auDA’s rules give the registrant two calendar days to do it.
• Take away access nobody needs any more. The Australian Signals Directorate’s advice is to review user access often and remove it when it is no longer needed.