Watch out for those domain scammers!
Last week one of my clients contacted me as they’d been approached from a company in China who was ‘concerned that a domain’ similar to my client’s was going to be registered by another business. As soon as she asked me about it I had a feeling that it was most likely either spam or a scam. Sure enough, once she sent me a copy of the email I was positive it was a scam, however I encouraged her to seek advice from a govt dept here in Australia just to be sure.
Today I received three of these same emails – each for a different domain I own – and all along the same lines. My suspicions have been more than confirmed and just to take it further I decided to do some searches of my own online.
Below are links to just three sites warning of this scam and there are many more too.
How scammers trick you out of your domain name (1)
How scammers trick you out of your domain name (2)
If in doubt, always best to seek advice (as my client had sought to do) and doing a search on Google or your otherwise favourite search engine is a good thing to do. I usually copy and paste a key phrase from the email and place it into the search engine to see if anything comes up. Sure enough, it did!
Thanks for the warning. I have received several of these emails myself, and natural born skeptic that I am, promptly deleted them. Good to know that my instincts were correct.
I’m registered with Go Daddy – if it doesn’t come from them it gets dragged right to the trash!
I just wish I could kill those people sending me Viagra ads! Arrrrrrrrrggghhh! Not only does the medication bug me but now the ads do too!
Excellent article. The people that want to do bad things can be smart and creative, and keep coming up with new stuff!
Sally
http://www.stopsmokingwithdrsally.com
Thank you, Precious Kathie, for the great article! I, too, have had the same type of emails and do quickly delete them.
Again, thank you.
Have an amazing day!
Blessings,
Ora ~
Thanks Kathie – we too received an email like this a few weeks ago and my Mum forwarded it to me in a bit of a bother.
I checked my domain registrations and then promptly ignored the email
What will they think of next?
Charly.
Hi Kathie.
I also received this about 2 weeks ago informing me that a company in China wanted to register a similar domain and that I should protect my brand. I did a google search on the company and the name of the person who signed the email to see if they were legit. I got a couple emails from them after the first contact and I never bothered to reply. I checked Godaddy, realized my domain was up to date and just blocked the sender’s email address.