In the last month, I’ve had the pleasure to be confronted with scammers twice. Both of them sent cleverly disguised, even legal, scam mails about your domain names. Avoid the following two companies at all costs:
- Domain Renewal Group: An U.K based company, that sends you a letter because one of your domain names is about to expire. You might receive this letter is you’re using one of the ‘big’ extensions like .com, .net, .info, .eu…
- The scam: In reality, if you do some research, you’ll learn that your domain name is “safe” – it won’t expire for another year. They also try to make you register other ‘extensions’ for your domain name, like .net, .com., .org etc… in my case, even domain names that I had already registered for +5 years.
- US Domain Licensing: This group will send you an e-mail or fax, with an indirect threat (or, as they call it, a warning): As the owner of a .com domain name, they’re informing you that the .us domain name will be publically available ‘in six months’ and you should take action immediatly.
- The scam: The things is: the .us version of your domain name has always been up for grabs, and it’s up to you to decide wether you want it or not. By sending this ‘threat’ to customers they want to trick them into using a domain name with hardly any value. Don’t take my word on this; different American sites claim that ‘U.S business have no reason to purchase a .us domain name’
- Our advice: Ignore any communication from both of the companies. Your domain registrar will warn you should your domain name be about to expire; and theyt’re also the go-to guys to register a .us domain name, if you insist.
- In case of doubt: If you’re receiving e-mails about your domain names and are not sure wether they’re real or not, send a copy to joomlaandmore at gmail dot com ; and we’ll check for you what’s going on.