For all of you who own a domain name, you may have heard of some horror stories in which the honest customer has completed some paper work to renew their expiring domain name, only to find that the domain and website are no longer on the internet.
It's not there any more, so where is it.
That paper work you signed has just given control of your domain name to another company!
This company then hold your domain to ransom, demanding further funds to get it back in your control.
How the scam works
- You receive a domain expiry notice in via postal mail (or in some cases email). This phony invoice lists your domain name(s) with an amount to be paid and a reply by date.
- You or someone in your organisation responds to the notice and send a payment by check or credit card.
- No confirmation request email is sent to you to authorise the transfer.
- A transfer request is submitted to the registry and the transfer process begins.
When you choose to transfer your domain name from one registrar to another, it is the responsibility of the gaining registrar, the company you are transferring to, to get the authorisation of the domain owner before processing the transfer.
Normally, this confirmation is done by sending an email to the administrative contact listed in the current whois record for the domain.
Once you've sent a payment, unless your existing registrar is taking steps to prevent domains from transfer, your domain could complete the transfer without further confirmation or knowledge from you.
Once this happens, the only way to get your domain back with your current registrar is to transfer it back, and pay for an additional year's renewal.
What these "Renewals" could mean to you
If you renew your domain(s) by responding to one of these renewal notices, the following can happen:
- You will likely pay too much for your renewal. You may already have at lower rate with your existing registrar.
- You could lose your customer service. Once your domain is transferred to another registrar, your current provider will not be able to provide customer support for your domain.
What should you do?
If you receive a document or email from another company asking for your domain name to be renewed and it's not from us, then please contact us to check if this is correct, however in most cases if it is not from us then it's a scam and you can rip it up.
If you've already signed and paid for the domain to be transferred then you will need to contact us ASAP to see if we can stop the transfer and keep your domain name. If the transfer is completed then we will try to get it back to you with out you having to pay any extra costs, however in most cases extra payment to the scammers is the only option.
