Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Domain name scam?

Yesterday I had a call from a domain name registration company. They were calling to warn me that someone, at an unbelievable cost of £800.00 was in the process of registering every possible variant of my domain steelstrip.co.uk.

They really sounded convincing, and asked if any aggrieved employees had left recently, or if I was having major problems with any local competitor.

They did mention at one point in the conversation that one of the domains they were registering was steelstrip.eu , but went on to tell me that if I wished, I could have "first choice" on all the domains they were registering, and they would do it for me.

Now £800 is a lot to pay for second and third tier domains, so I thanked them for the warning and but declined the offer.

After the phone call I went on to 123 domain names registration site and checked steelstrip.eu, only to find that it was available for £5.00 ! and I registered it.

I am not certain this was a scam, but it would be easy to make a quick and easy profit, by panicking someone in to thinking that their name and possible reputation on the internet was under threat from someone with malicious intent.

Be wary of cold calls from domain registration companies that you do not know, and if you want to protect variants of your domain name, search on google and you will find a host of reputable companies that will register second and third tier domains very economically.

 

Technorati Tags:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a scam see:
http://www.nic.uk/disputes/courtcases/domainregserv/

Always used a well know and trusted register like 123 to get your domains.