I own quite a lot of domain names and they are registered with several different companies.
Each month I get email reminders to renew the registration.
Recently I received one which looked like this:
I thought, “Not seen one like this before”. It looked genuine enough. It had all my correct details…meaning I did own the domain name and it was due for renewal.
Then I saw the cost – up to $999 for life registration.
I thought, “Wow. That cannot be right”.
I normally pay anything between $5 and $10 per year for domain registration. So $999 would be anything between 100 and 200 years!
Then I realized it was scam!
It can be so easy to be sucked in.
Be careful!
___________________________________________________________________
Andrew is a website builder and helps small businesses with their on-line presence…so they can grow their customer list and increase sales. That’s it! That’s what we do each and every day.
Andrew, I also occasionally get these notices. I find it happens on the few domains I own that don’t have private registration.
Question: what’s your favorite domain registration company? I’m thinking of switching some domains.
John
Recently I have only used BlueHost. I have my hosting with them which is pretty good and each extra domain only costs S$10 per year to register.
Andrew
We have learned to never fax and/or click on a link in an email. We always login to our profile at the website in question. We were once big eBay sellers and the phishing scams got to be really good. Good thing you caught this Andrew!
Colleen
Nice to see you!
I agrre with your approach. I go direct to the websites as well.
Andrew
Hey there, where you been hiding Colleen?? 🙂
@Andrew – sorry for hijacking the thread man, just haven’t seen her in forever!
Dennis
No worries. I wondered as well! Just thought. Collen hadn’t visited my blog!
Andrew
It’s interesting you bring this up; here’s a little known fact…it’s been my understanding for a while now that a “legal lifetime” for most things online is 3yrs.
Ex: Pay $$$ for a lifetime membership.
A fact as I know it.
I came into some money in early 2010 and re-registered all my domains for 10yrs, the max with Godaddy…..Google loves me. lol
Dennis
It’s not only Goolge who loves you!
Andrew
Aww shucks. *blush*
The scams are definitely getting more sophisticated – they have to because no one is falling for the obvious ones any more. It’s the scams where they mix in real information with fake information where it gets harder to detect. What a pain.
TJ,
They are getting harder and harder to detect, I agree.
And this one did have a lot of my real information.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Once, I received a similar e-mail from some x company. This is strange because I have registered all my domains with godaddy, and they only suppose to send me this remainders. I imagine what this people do is to scan domain who-is records in search of a potential victim. Fortunately, I can distinguish who is the scammer because I am only registered within a single company.
Thanks for sharing.
Daniel
Having them registered with one company is sensible!
I haven’t unfortunately!
Andrew
I thought I had seen “them” all, but I’ve not seen this one up till now.
But what’s to say you will not live to 100+ Andrew – with you residing in sunny England – then the $999 price tag could be a good investment for you after all, LOL!
Joseph
You have to remember I’m almost 50 now!
Andrew
Hello Andrew,
Actually I think I got two this kind of emails but (I think I have a trained eye that can spot scams) I didn’t even pursue the link, I just hit the spam button and forgot about it.
But not so many are fortunate enough to know when this kind of thins happen. The best way to avoid it is to be suspicious of everything.
If you know the website of the company that asks you to do the operation, go to their website first and look for such information or ask them directly via their contact form or support.
Don’t be fast to pay anything, I usually check even paypal, I press the buy button from an order I then close the landing page, go login into paypal then press the button again. If when I reach the paypal landing page again I am not logged in I know that they are trying to scam me.
What can I see, better be safe and take 20 minutes of your time to check the veracity of the email then lose a lot of money and get a lot of stress.
Alex,
What you say makes total sense. I think sometimes, many of us are simply too busy to do such a thing and that is where the scammers win.
Andrew
Whew! That was close. But with the price range I would suspect too.
Anne,
That is what jumped out at me…otherwise I could have been scammed. Hence…nearly!
Andrew
Never click on any link received and never try to enter id and password on those pages . Always visit them manually to check bill and other information . These scammer just cloak links and divert you to hacking scripts .
Excellent points you make – we should all follow your advice.
Thanks.
Andrew
Yowsa – that would have been an expensive mistake.
I used to work in yellow page sales, and at least once or twice a year, I’d have a client get scammed by the phony yellow pages.
“Please verify your listing information is correct by checking this box and signing below.” They were basically agreeing to be billed $295 per year for the rest of their life.
Julie
Ouch! That would be a BIG mistake.
Andrew
I’ve never seen a mail like this before – had the price not been so high you would probably have been sucked in to it! It seems that every time a new scam is made public and people are warned off it, another more sophisticated one comes along. On another note, I have ten million pounds in a Nigerian bank account – would anyone like to claim it on my behalf, for a small deposit?
Jen
Jen,
10 million! Is that all? Not worth my time. I don’t get out of bed for anything less than 50 million!
Andrew
I’ve received those on occasion, and the scary thing was it was for a domain that I hadn’t had registered for a couple years! For a while, I thought I was still being charged for it. A little more digging showed it was a scam.
Scary what people will come up with to scam others!
Delena
Delena
Very scary!
There must be a small percentage that get caught otherwise they wouldn’t do it…would they?
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
The document you’ve shown us sure looks pretty well made. If it sure sounds good to be true and/or you feel suspicious about it, then by all means follow your instincts. Also, $999 for life? Too hefty a price tag for just a single domain name.
Thanks for sharing! Never seen this kind of scam before. Better be careful.
Felicia
The scams are getting harder and harder to ‘see’!
Andrew
I get something similar for every domain I register. It looks so genuine, mentioning my web host, everything, comes to my home address, I mean they are good. But there is a tiny small print on the ones I got that say something like you don’t have to pay this, this is an offer.
Scammers….
Brankica
WOW! Scammers actually telling you…you don;t have to pay!
Still a scam I agree.
Andrew