With any large market these days, comes the unfortunate presence of scams offering huge discounts and large returns.
In most cases we are well enough educated to know what we are reading is rubbish and to dis-regard it. However with things regarding the Internet or I.T knowledge, many people are left in the dark on what is legitimate and can fall prey to fear of losing there website, email and presence on the Internet. Taking advantage of this fact are Domain Renewal scams.
If you don’t know, a domain name is a web address people enter into there web browsers to get to your website and the prefex after the @ on your email for example – NAS.com.au is New Age Solutions Domain name.
The scam has about three different versions:
- Renewal notice with and or invoice with payment details
- Renewal notice for a domain which is similar to your domain name
- A Notice stating that a company is after purchasing a domain name similar to yours (.tw, .hk, .cn) and is giving you a chance to buy before they do.
Version one comes as just a notice or with an invoice hoping to catch you off guard to simply pay the asked amount, also capturing your payment details by credit card if you chose to do so & your personal information as well in the process.
Version two is quite similar to one, however it comes from a legit domain company trying to again catch you off guard and purchasing a domain name similar to yours, but rather than .au, they’ll have .tw or .hk
Version three is written to trick you into purchasing multiple domain names, which you will never need, suggesting that a company is interested in buying a domain name like yours, and are contacting you our of courtesy to purchase these first to take them off the market. This comes from another legit domain renewal company that uses fear to persuade you into buying domains, which you don’t need.
The only way to prevent things like this occurring to you is knowledge and possibly a good spam filter, However New Age has written a short list of bullet points on how to help prevent this from happening to you, & to define what is real and legit from a scam.
Let us look at if for you!
Just fax or email any renewal notices that you have received, we’ll check if the statement is authentic and keep on our records, so if you find yourself with another renewal notice 4 months down the track, we can easily inform you that its not genuine, preventing any extra costs or credit card fraud in the future.
Other helpful tips if you would like to check for yourself are:
- Check who hosts your domain name by entering your domain name into http://www.whoishostingthis.com and contact the provider to see when your renewal is due
- Check your old statements and compare with your new, for pricing, domain name and company
- Check the domain name is the same as your current (nas.com.au not nas.com.tw)
- Keep in your calendar when your Domain name is due for renewal
- If in doubt, do some research on the company to see if people have had any issues, if you do find a scam, be sure to sent an email to http://www.scamwatch.gov.au
Written By Steve Bakker