The Oatmeal was temporarily shutdown by ICANN: here’s how to avoid having this happen | Name.com Blog: 31 Jul 2014
"... Today, however, we were shocked and saddened to see that The Oatmeal had been taken down. One of the most popular websites on the ‘Net had been eviscerated. The content was gone; the enlightening and hilarious glow darkened. What happened? Well if we were shocked it was down, we were even more surprised the site wasn’t resolving because of one simple little task: ICANN Verification. (We said ‘simple’ but we’re not going to say it’s not annoying.) We’re also very happy that we can help. To avoid waking up to your website disappeared by the international agents of ICANN, here’s the scoop on what ICANN verification is and how you verify your domain...."
ICANN Verification Tutorial -
ICANN now requires that each contact information for domains be verified via email or phone. (Name.com video published on Apr 3, 2014)
further information about WHOIS accuracy:
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#whois-accuracy
and
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/contact-verification-2013-05-03-en
