The scammers trying to separate you from your money never sleep and we’ve been meaning to send a reminder about that for a while now. Were prompted today by a couple of things: the first being a client who recently mistook one of these scams for a legitimate notice from NinerNet, and the second the receipt of four emails to us that arrived in quick succession in the span of 22 minutes this morning from the same scammers.
What these scams have in common is that they’re sent to the email address you use in your domain registration, and masquerade as domain renewal notices. The management of the WHOIS system — the database of domains and their owners — is a bone of contention among many, and after more than three decades ICANN has still not figured out how to make the WHOIS system useful for legitimate purposes while protecting domain owners from scams like these. We make five suggestions in the “Lessons to be learned” section of a rather long and detailed post from last year if you’re annoyed at the amount of spam you receive. One of those suggestions is not private domain registration, despite the fact that we can make money on that service.
The two particularly active scams that you should be aware of are these two:
You’ll note that the latter dates back to at least 2015. If the scam wasn’t working, they’d stop. Don’t be scammed!
If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know. Thanks.
