Transferring an already registered domain name involves changing the registrar that provides the registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS entry updates through the new domain registrar. The transfer procedure is standard with most generic and country-code domain name extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name involves several necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a security option, which is being embraced by more and more domain registry operators. It’s a standard feature supported by all generic TLDs. If a domain is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer procedure, so no one can even try to snatch your domain. The domain lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default when they are registered.