Domain name scams
Scams involving domain name registrations are increasingly common in our digital world. These scams often involve the use of stolen credit cards, stolen personal information, and false contact information. The goal of these scammers is to gain access to a domain name and then resell it for quick profit. Unfortunately, this means that business owners can not only be left without their domain name, but this often crashes their whole website, which can costs thousands of dollars to restore if you don’t have a backup. This real life example of a domain name registration scam that we’ve shown below is unfortunately one of many out there.
What is a domain name?
What information is publicly available about your domain name?
Unless you opt for additional domain privacy when purchasing your domain name, it can be pretty easy to track down who owns a domain name and how to contact them. (This is why we recommend using an alternate phone number when registering your domain, since you’ll often notice a sudden influx of spam calls after renewing it.)
ICANN’s “Who Is” tool is a great resource for tracking down who owns a domain name, as well as doing a privacy audit on your own domains.
How to protect yourself
The most important thing you can do to protect yourself and your domain name is to keep a good record of where you purchased it (Godaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, etc), when it renews, and what your login credentials are. That way, if you do get a letter like this in the mail, you won’t be fooled into providing your payment information.
If you do get an email or a notice in the mail about your domain name, and you aren’t sure whether it’s legitimate or not, feel free to contact us. We always offer free help tracking down domain names and looking at possible domain name scams.
