08/28/2026
Whoever controls your domain name controls your whole business.
Your domain is the address behind your website and your email. It sits in an account at whatever company you registered it with, like GoDaddy.
Anyone who can log into that account can point your website and email wherever they like.
At a lot of small businesses, nobody knows who has that login. It was set up years ago by a web guy who's long gone, or it's under one staff member's personal email with a password that hasn't changed since.
If someone gets into that account, they don't need to hack anything else.
They can send your website visitors to a fake page that still shows your real address.
They can take over your email and reset the passwords on everything tied to it.
They can send your clients an invoice from your real address, and your clients will pay it, because it came from you.
So go and check who controls the account, whether it's got two-factor login switched on, and whether the domain lock is turned on, which stops anyone moving your domain elsewhere.
While you're in there, set it to auto-renew so it can't expire.