Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways that you can lose your domain name. And, there are a lot of scammers who want to take your domain away from you. The scammers routinely go as far as to send out bills (through the US Postal Service AND through email) that look very authentic.
The most common way for people to lose their domain names is to forget to renew the domain name(s). Once renewal time comes, and your grace period has past, your registrar may sell your domain name to the highest bidder.
Another common way for people to lose their domain names is by getting scammed. Scammers send emails (and real mail via the US Postal Office) to you and convince you that you have to pay them because it is time to renew your domain name. Then, once you have signed their notice and paid them, you have lost money and they can take your domain name away from you. We have had clients who have almost transferred their domains to another registrar - and didn't even know they did it. Their only saving grace was that they contacted us because they didn't know what the company was requesting (the transfer authorization code) and let us know what they did so we were able to cancel it (before they had given them the transfer authorization code). Unfortunately, once they paid the scammers, they had no recourse to get their money back.
At one time, we recommended to all of our clients that they keep their own domain name(s) in their own domain account. However, we have had too many clients get scammed and their domains almost taken away from them.
So, in consideration of this, we opened up our "HCG Secure Management Account" for domains.
When your domain(s) is/are placed in this account, you can be assured that your domain name won't get transferred away from you (without your permission), and it will not be taken away if you forget to renew it. It will, also, not be held hostage (like some domain providers try to do).
You will still own your domain completely ... you just won't have to deal with the scammers because we place it in a proxy account, which effectively hides your contact information from the scammers.