Opinion

I’ve recently been getting so many emails from this company: Domain Service (or whatever company they decide they want to be).

HOW THEY OPERATE

They send out emails to unsuspecting domain name owners. They get the victim’s email addresses from the listed registered owners of different domain names. Then they send out these bogus warnings that their domains will be lost if they do not renew their subscription. They pose as the authorized company of said domain when actually, they have nothing to do with the domain and actually want to steal it from the victim.

They say they can do it for a huge sum — many times more than the actual cost of the domain name. The victim pays and that’s the last they hear of them.

If you ever receive an email like this, simply trash it and then delete your Trash content. Better still, report it to the Department of Justice. If you want to be sure about the email, contact your website manager or domain register and they can confirm the email’s authenticity.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

SAMPLE

Here’s a sample of one of the emails I received:

Important notice

Notice#: 393989

Date: 04/27/2020

Domain Expiration

Domain: [NameOfDomain.com] (whatever your domain is)

Expiration date: 05/05/2020

To: [The Victim, Victim’s Company]

[Victim’s Address]

Secure Online Payment

Domain Name: [NameOfDomain.com]

Attn: [Victim’s Name]

This important notification notifies you about the notice of your domain frtsgv.org optimization submission. The information in this email may contain legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the Registration Office for our traffic generator. We do not register or renew domain names. We are selling traffic generator tools. This information is intended for the use of the individual(s) named above.
If you fail to complete your domain name registration frtsgv.org search engine optimization service by the expiration date, may the dismissal of this search engine optimization domain name notification notice.

Process

Secure Online Payment

to complete your payment

Failure to complete your domain name registration [NameOfDomain.com] search engine optimization service process may make it difficult for customers to find you on the web.

Act immediately

This domain registration for [ search engine service optimization notification will expire 05/05/2020.

Instructions and Unlike Instructions from this Newsletter:
You have received this message because you elected to receive notification. If you no longer wish to receive our notifications, please unlike here. If you have multiple accounts with us, you must opt out for each one individually to unlike receiving notifications. We are a search engine optimization company. We do not directly register or renew domain names. This is not a bill. You don’t need to pay the amount unless you accept this notification. This message, which contains promotional material strictly along the guidelines of the Can-Spam act of 2003. We have clearly mentioned the source mail-id of this email, also clearly mentioned our subject lines and they are in no way misleading. Please do not reply to this email, as we are not able to respond to messages sent to this address.