Transferring an active domain involves changing the registrar that handles the registration service, so after the transfer, you will have to manage things like renewal fees or DNS resource record updates through the new registrar. The transfer procedure is standard with most generic and country-code domain name extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and involve different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain entails several basic steps and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a safety option, which is being adopted by more and more domain name registry organizations. It is a default feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it will be impossible to start a transfer procedure, so no one can even attempt to steal your domain name. The lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered in the first place and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.