The domain existed since December 1997 and was administered by the University of Southern California . Registrations of addresses under .um have never been accepted - the only address under .um was the registration authority itself, which indicated that registrations are currently not possible. In 2006, the university notified the IANA that it was no longer interested in managing the .um top-level domain. Therefore, in consultation with ICANN , the United States Department of Commerce - National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the operator, the .um domain was reset to an unused status in 2008. It was agreed that ICANN should not take any measures for the future use of the .um domain without consulting the US government and obtaining its prior consent. Since then ".um" has been listed by IANA in the Root Zone Database as "Not assigned" until today (2019).
