It happens a few times a year. It happened today, in fact. A client contacts me because they have received a notice that it’s time to renew one of their domain names. But something seems fishy, so they ask my opinion. They were right to be suspicious.
How it Works
Domain name registration contact information — unless you pay your registrar extra to have your information ‘hidden’ or ‘secured’ — can be found easily through sites like whois.net. The available data includes nearly everything you provided when you signed up for your domain name: your first and last name, your address, your email address, etc.
Enter to the scene some crafty folks who own a domain name registration business and manage to gather this registration information about you and many others, and then use it to send you convincing notices that your domain is about to expire and you need to pay them to renew — now — before it’s too late! Read the rest of this entry »