We’re seeing what appears to be a concerted “phishing” effort aimed at the registrants of domains. To be honest, the first time we saw one of these emails, the allegations it contained made us angry, and we almost fell for it. This is the classic reaction that “phishers” are looking for — anger, or fear — because those emotions will cause the smartest among us to lose control, perhaps for just long enough to do something stupid.
As always, our best advice is to take a moment to calm yourself down and take a critical look at the email that you have received. It is almost certainly fake.
We have received two different versions of these emails for several domains registered to us, and the emails are likely tailored to the registrar with which you have your domain registered. Below are the emails we’ve received, with legitimate email addresses altered to prevent their being automatically harvested by yet more spammers.
Example 1
From: domainabuse _AT_ tucows.com
To: NinerNet Communications
Subject: Domain ADDRESSGAURD.COM Suspension Notice
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 18:46:54 -0700Dear Sir/Madam,
The following domain names have been suspended for violation of the TUCOWS, INC. Abuse Policy:
Domain Name: ADDRESSGAURD.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
Registrant Name: Domain AdministratorMultiple warnings were sent by TUCOWS, INC. Spam and Abuse Department to give you an opportunity to address the complaints we have received.
We did not receive a reply from you to these email warnings so we then attempted to contact you via telephone.
We had no choice but to suspend your domain name when you did not respond to our attempts to contact you.
Click here and download a copy of complaints we have received.
Please contact us by email at mailto:domainabuse _AT_ tucows.com for additional information regarding this notification.
Sincerely,
TUCOWS, INC.
Spam and Abuse Department
Abuse Department Hotline: 480-124-0101
Example 2
From: “TUCOWS, INC.” <domainabuse@tucows.com.org>
To: NinerNet Communications
Subject: Domain GIVE-SPAM-THE-SLIP.COM Suspension Notice
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 21:59:41 -0700Dear Sir/Madam,
The following domain names have been suspended for violation of the TUCOWS, INC. Abuse Policy:
Domain Name: GIVE-SPAM-THE-SLIP.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
Registrant Name: Domain AdministratorMultiple warnings were sent by TUCOWS, INC. Spam and Abuse Department to give you an opportunity to address the complaints we have received.
We did not receive a reply from you to these email warnings so we then attempted to contact you via telephone.
We had no choice but to suspend your domain name when you did not respond to our attempts to contact you.
Click here and download a copy of complaints we have received.
Please contact us for additional information regarding this notification.
Sincerely,
TUCOWS, INC.
Spam and Abuse Department
Abuse Department Hotline: 480-570-6902
The text “Click here and download” was, in all cases, hyperlinked to websites NOT on domains associated with NinerNet or Tucows, the registrar with whom our clients’ domains are registered. You must always take a moment to view (in the status bar of your email program) the URL (address) of the website to which a link will take you, before you click the link.
While the first email was crafted so that it appeared to be sent from domainabuse _AT_ tucows.com — which is a real email address — subsequent messages have arrived from domainabuse@tucows.com.org. Tucows.com.org is not a real domain; however, it does exist as a sub-domain of the com.org domain which, despite how odd it looks, is an actual domain. (It is being “monetised” by its owners, who probably have nothing to do with the spammers/phishers but who have unfortunately set it up in such a way that “tucows.com.org” appears [to both humans and automated anti-spam systems] to be a working domain.) We have configured our mail servers to block messages from the tucows.com.org sub-domain, but if the contact email address for your domain is on a domain we don’t host (e.g., gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.) then you may still receive these messages. Since tucows.com is a legitimate domain, we cannot block email from it.
As always, if you have any questions about a questionable email that you have received — or one that has made you afraid or angry — please forward it to us and we’ll take a look at it to determine whether or not it is legitimate.
Update, 2015-11-01: Minor corrections, add missing sender email address, add actual domains and remove protection for bogus email address.
Update, 2015-11-03: We’re now seeing these scam emails coming from domainabuse@tucows.com.info, and in this case the “com.info” domain (and any sub-domains) is completely bogus and should be blocked by default to most of our email clients. We checked out what happens when you click the link (don’t try this at home!) and our browser was directed to download a file named “GIVESPAMTHESLIP.COM_copy_of_complaints.pdf.scr”. This is an old trick, naming a file with a “double extension” to try to trick people into opening what they think (in this case) is a PDF file, but which (in this case) is actually (on Windows machines) an executable screensaver file (“.scr”) that can carry a malicious payload. Remember, think before you click!
