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.BE domain policies

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Sky V
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The geoTLD for Belgium is .BE and is regulated by DNS Belgium.

Registration details

Registrants are not required to be Belgian residents or business operators to register.

As of May 2022, the registry requires additional validation from a registrant. The registrant receives an email from the registry to validate online.

The name length requirements for these domains are three to 63 characters before the TLD. The maximum registration term is one year.

Explicit renewal Yes
Domain locking available No
Auto-renew date 30 days
Grace period No
Redemption period 40 days
Authcode required Yes
Contact Privacy  No
IDNs available Yes
Registry premiums allowed No
DNSSEC manageable in RCP No

We support the following IDN languages for this TLD:

Dutch French Finnish
German Norweigan Swedish

Renewals and registration terms

.BE domains are renewed through auto-renewal only, manual renewal is not available for .BE domains.  The renew-by date is three days before the domain's expiration date.

If the automatic renewal does not go through before the renew-by date, the domain will go into redemption. There is no renewal grace period and the redemption period is 40 days, it will cost an additional fee of 250 USD to recover the domain, plus the renewal fee.

It will not be possible to modify a domain in redemption. If the account holder does not recover the domain from redemption, the registry will delete it after the 40-day redemption period.  The name will be available to the public after deletion.

Leap year registrations

Domains registered on February 29 have an expiry date of February 28.

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Contact changes

Any modifications to the Organization, First Name, or Last Name fields require a trade. A trade is a transfer of domain ownership to a new entity. The trade resets the domain's registration, so the new expiry date will be one year after the trade completes. The cost of a trade is equivalent to one year of renewal for a .BE domain.

  1. To proceed with a trade, request the transfer key from the registry.
    send_the_transfer_code.png
  2. Submit a verified request with the transfer key and the necessary contact details:
    Title:
    Organization:
    First Name:
    Last Name:
    Street:
    City:
    ZIP/Postal Code:
    State/Province:
    Country:
    Phone:
    Email:
  3. In the verified request, acknowledge and agree to the trade fee and that the new registration date will be set to one year after the trade completes.
    Note: Support will proceed with the trade and update the verified request once complete.

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Verification process

As of November 2020, the registry performs verification of registrants' identities in case of suspicious registrations. The registry performs verification before the domain name is activated to stop potentially fraudulent registrations and to prevent domain names from causing damage.
When the registry sees that the holder data is incomplete or incorrect, they temporarily delegate registrations to the name servers of DNS Belgium, so domains are registered but not yet active. The domain's URL points to a page with the details from the verification message. In the verification message, the registry asks the registrant to prove their identity. The registrant provides the registry with the required documentation to confirm. Once the registry has received and approved the proof, the domain is activated.  
DNS Belgium gives registrants 14 days to update their information. If they do not make any changes, the registry will revoke the domain name. Registrants have 40 days after the revocation to update the Whois information and reactivate the domain, or it will be deleted and become available for public registration.
Note: In March 2023, all registrants can verify their details online and are no longer required to send
identification documents via email. The verification is done automatically with Itsme or eID.

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Registry WhoIs check

Registrants must respect the general terms and conditions of the registry agreement. One of the obligations is to provide correct data during the registration process. DNS Belgium regularly reviews WhoIs information, and when encountering questionable data, the registry emails the registrant requesting to update the WhoIs data.
Please note: The registry sees a registrant as a private individual when the organization field is blank.

The domain name is revoked and placed into quarantine within 28 days of no corrections. Registrants have 40 days after the revocation to contact the registry to update the WhoIs information and reactivate.

A new transfer order is required to obtain an activated domain in quarantine.

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Registry revoke details

When the registry notices that a domain name has incorrect or incomplete registrant details, an email is sent to the registrant requesting an amendment to the wrong detail. The registrant has 14 days to amend their details.

After 14 days, the registry removes the name servers when the data is not updated. The domain name no longer resolves.

The registrant has 14 days to take action and amend their details. When the registrant modifies the details, the registry sends an email to the registrant informing them that the domain name is active. When the data is still not updated/correct, the registry revokes the domain name and puts it in quarantine.

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Transfers

When attempting to transfer a .BE domain, users may experience the error "Request recognized as harmful and will not be processed." The error occurs for the following reasons:

  • The authcode is invalid or incorrect. 
  • There are multiple transfer approval emails. Make sure to use the most recent one; each new one sent invalidates the previous ones.
  • The contact information on the transfer order does not match the current contact information.

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Additional Resources

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