Registrars provide the nameservers you give them to the TLD itself. So, resolution doesn't depend on the registrar's infrastructure unless you're using the registrar's nameservers directly.
It works like this:
Root -> TLD -> NS -> NS -> ETC.
Opensource OpenTTD [1] (based on Transportation Tycoon Deluxe) is still around and in active development it seems. It was a great Simcity replacement in the past for me. Obviously graphics are dated, but gameplay was great.
No domain registrar should be taking the last four of your credit card number as proof of account identity or ownership. We certainly don't. Have you confirmed they reset the password based on just the last four of the credit card OR was your account's email address itself comprised, allowing them to reset the password via your email address?
Building on that:
The github blog post states that using an ALIAS record will allow you to take advantage of their CDN. I don't know if I believe that. Since the ip is being fetched by the ALIAS supporting nameserver, the CDN will use that as the end user location. Therefore, everyone is going to that location.
The only way around that would be:
1) CDN uses IP ANYCAST (in which case their CDN would work with just listing the IP as well and the ALIAS point is moot)
OR
2) ALIAS supporting nameserver uses the draft edns-client-subnet rfc (very low probability any current ALIAS provider uses it to resolve the ALIAS since support for the draft may be iffy and much heavier ns resolve logic for ALIAS provider).
Additional thoughts welcome.
Update: Github's external CDN provider is using ANYCAST, so that explains why that's working --- AND --- to explain why their CDN doesn't work on direct ip pointing is because they are giving you the ip to their own direct servers, which are non-cdn / non-anycast, which explains why in this case, the ALIAS record gives the benefit for their CDN, while the ip doesn't (because they're having you use a different non-cdn ip so they can change external cdn providers at will and not affect those that are pointing to the ip directly).
You'll only have to confirm any underlying email changes in your example. However, the new ICANN contract also mandates a yet to be defined "Privacy and Proxy Accreditation Program", which will bring changes to the different whois privacy services that registrars currently offer.
Competitor registrar here. This is actually required by the new 2013 ICANN contract. Not all registrars are on the new contract yet, but those that have already signed are required to start following it as of January.
You can thank the law enforcement lobby and ICANN wanting to keep them happy. All of us registrars fought hard against it for a number of obvious reasons, but they went forward with it anyway.
Almost all registrars will be on the new contract soon if they already aren't because ICANN made it a requirement to be able to sell the new GTLDs. This is now going to be a normal part of owning a domain name.
Registrar here (Misk.com). Wanted to share some information on the restore fees discussion. Yes, registries charge hefty restore fees. Using .com as an example (since it can be different for each extension), there is a renewal grace period that can last up to 45 days (we delete at 40 days). Once the name is deleted, the name goes into redemption for 30 days after that. This is where the high fees are hit due to the registry. The thing to note is that some registrars no longer delete names after the renewal grace period ends and pass the name into an auction system. Hence the name never goes into the real redemption period. In those cases the name is still in the renewal grace period and charging higher redemption fees is a business decision by that company. You can tell if this is the case if after a registrar's redemption period, anything happens to the name except becoming available to register by the public (after a 5 day pending delete at the registry). The real redemption period is 30 days and is reflected in the whois record. Domains should still be renewed before expiration since things could change at any level and there is no reason to risk it.
Here are the expiration policies I could find for GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Misk.com (us):
It works like this: Root -> TLD -> NS -> NS -> ETC.
Root Servers are fixed and everything drills down from there: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/servers
A visual example of how the nameserver hops work starting from the root using the nameserver delegation view feature of our dns lookup tool: https://www.misk.com/tools/#dns/[email protected]...
(Disclosure: I work @ Misk.com, an ICANN accredited registrar, our link above)