Symptoms
When purchasing a new domain with some user as a contact, one can notice that the registered domain has contact's first or last name containing not the user's real data but the EMPTY_VALUE value.
Cause
Vendor has set up a custom attribute having ID like FNAME_ASCII or LNAME_ASCII. This attribute can be disabled and not filled for a particular user from the Provider's/Reseller's Control Panel. As a result of an internal software issue PBA-74342, if the user data is changed, the system automatically assigns a value EMPTY_VALUE to such disabled attributes. This information is not displayed in the Control Panel and can only be acquired from the database.
During the domain registration, the system detects whether a user has some value set up for FNAME_ASCII or LNAME_ASCII attribute. If there is any, its value will be used instead of a real user's "First Name" or "Last Name" respectively. In general terms, this functionality is described in Billing Provider's Guide.
Resolution
If such custom attribute is used nowhere in the system, it would be safer to delete it. Since there are users having this attribute configured, a manual action is required to delete those values from the database. In order to do this, submit a request to the Odin Technical Support to check if the issue is related to the custom attributes and perform the required actions to completely remove it from the system.
To clarify the status of PBA-74342, contact your Technical Account Manager or Pooled Technical Associate Team at pta@odin.com.