Scam Detectives Investigates – Domain Name Scams

I just got off the phone with a scammer. Yes, another one.

What were they trying to sell me?

The call came from a young lady who identified herself as a “registrar for the internet”. She told me that a rival company had tried to register ten domain names, which were all similar to my domain and company name.

A matter of principle

Her script was well crafted to instil panic. She’d apparently received the registration request and had “smelled a rat” because she recognised my brand. “As a matter of principle” she’d decided to take it upon herself to call me and offer me the opportunity to register these domains to stop the rival firm from hijacking my brand name and passing themselves off as me. I could register the ten (.co.uk) domain names for 10 years to secure them long term for only £1,000 + VAT. All she needed was my credit card number and she’d put it in place straight away.

What’s the scam?

Most of us are fiercely protective of our brand. We’ll go to great lengths to protect it and the suggestion that someone else is trying to use our brand name to promote a rival business is enough to throw us into a flat spin panic. The scammers know this, and that’s the hook that they use for this scam. The truth is that nobody tried to register these domains, and the scammer is simply trying to sell them to you at over-inflated prices (around 300% above market value) for a period that they simply can’t offer.

Key points to remember:

Domain name registration is an automated process. You choose your domains, pay for them and that’s it, they’re registered.
Domain name registrars do not take responsibility for ensuring that the registrant has the right to use the brand name they are registering. If the domain is available, they’ll sell it. Under no circumstances would a sales agent for a registrar offer to sell those domains to someone else to block your registration – it would be unethical and possibly consititutes a breach of data protection legislation.
The going rate for a .co.uk domain is around £3.00 + VAT a year and you can only register it for 2 years at a time. There’s no way to register it for longer than that.

If you get a call or an email with a similar story, hang up or hit “delete”!

Tags: business, domain names, Email Scams, phone scams

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 9:06 am and is filed under Advice for businesses, Bogus Callers, Email Scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Scam Detectives Investigates – Domain Name Scams

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