Registrar-Lock

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Registrar-Lock is a status assigned by a domain’s sponsoring registrar to help prevent unauthorized or accidental changes to the domain. When this lock is in place, most changes to the domain are blocked, but you can still renew the domain. Not every top-level domain supports Registrar-Lock; for example, .org.uk doesn’t, while the .ca domain added support in October 2010. You can see the domain’s status in WHOIS. To transfer the domain to another registrar, the Registrar-Lock must be disabled at the current registrar first.

Registrar-Lock is different from Registry-Lock. Registry-Lock is set at the registry and provides stronger security: an agent from the sponsoring registrar must request an unlock to the registry, sometimes involving phone verification and a secret passphrase. When a domain is Registry-Locked, its status is ServerUpdateProhibited.