Remington Begg
Don't become another victim of a domain name scam also known as a website name scam. These scammers are trying to make you become a customer of theirs and take over your website. What happens when they take over your domain name? Let's not let them get that far.
Did you get a renewal notice for your domain or an offer to sell you more domains similar to your current website? Most likely these letters in the mail about your domain aka website name could be a scam.
The most popular type of domain name or website name scams is called Domain Slamming. The scammer is trying to get you to renew your domain, or so it looks like, but in reality they are trying to get you to come over to their company. The name Domain Slamming came from Telephone Slamming. If you had a telephone in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this happened to you! As a business owner you may have had your merchant account slammed also. This is unauthorized switching of your provider to the scamming companies.
The only thing you can do to prevent these type of actions is locking your domain. This can be kind of a pain in the butt when you switch your hosting provider, would like to transfer your domain somewhere else, etc. Having your domain locked requires an additional step with authorization to unlock your domain should a transfer attempt happen.
So now that we have a better understanding of how to prevent this from happening, how can we recognize a domain name scam?
Most scams look like an invoice. You will receive a paper invoice in the mail or an email that will resemble an invoice. If you have someone that takes care of your domain registration, forward the email to them or get a scan or picture of it and send it to them to verify its validity. If you registered your domain yourself, or you want to investigate it on your own, head over to Who.is and type your domain name into the search. You will see two key fields near the top, date and registrar.
You can see when your domain will expire, and you can also see the company that 'holds' your domain, or where you registered your domain. That company is called the Registrar. Does your current Registrar match the email or letter you received? If it doesn't match you should share your experience with others so they can prevent this from happening also. Don't send that scammer any money!
Let's say those names match, should you just pay it? I wouldn't jump the gun just yet, take a look at the expiration. If it is coming up in the next few months, go ahead and renew. If it is too far out, I would wait. Personally, I like to call up my Registrar and renew over the phone, but that is because I am super safe.
A final way to check to see if the company sending you the notice is a scammer is by typing in the company name and scam into Google. Example: domain registry of America scam -- As you can see the first few results are links that discuss the scam that Domain Registry of America does.
Being informed about this will help you determine whether you are looking at a scam notice or a legitimate notice telling you that your domain is about to expire and you need to renew. Don't let that scammer get a hold of your website name or domain name, you never know what could happen with it in the hands of someone that is willing to trick you into doing business with them!