Well, I’m back in action! After a few weeks away from my website for various reasons (frustration with my drop in rankings and getting engaged among other things) it’s time to get back at it. Today’s topic of discussion – scam emails (or even letters through actual…mail mail) being sent to you about your domain name.

The reason this came up is because I recently was sent an email from a company called “DOMAIN REGISTRATION SEO SERVICE Corp.” regarding one of the many domain names I have. This is a very official looking email that is designed to look like your domain registration is expiring and you need to pay your invoice for renewal. A screenshot of the email can be found below.

For the unsuspecting reader, this looks like an important notification about your domain registration, and how you have to renew it. They are sure to use the domain name as much as they can, and also go so far as to say things like “If you fail to complete your domain name registration (domain) search engine submission…” to make it look like you are going to lose your domain if you fail to renew this.

Companies like this prey on the uninformed. To someone who doesn’t know any better, they will pay this company $54.00 for something called “Domain Registration Search Engine Service,” whatever that is. Unfortunately there are plenty of people who just aren’t aware of this practice, and end up paying these companies money for essentially nothing.

When I was working at a hosting company we would get calls almost daily about a company called “Domain Registry of America” that goes so far as to send mailed letters to customers about their domain names expiring. Luckily these customers knew that we were their registrar and called us to make sure everything was as it should be. I’m not sure if they are still doing what they have been, but simply from Google searching it looks like ICANN has suspended them from doing business.

So, what can you do to make sure you don’t fall for this? The easiest thing to do is know where your domain name is registered. If you get anything from a company other than that one about your domain name it’s best to ignore it. If you think it’s questionable then one phone call to the registrar will straighten everything out. Also, be sure to know the expiration date of your domain. The notification above says it has an expiration of 11/11/2014, but I know that the domain they emailed me about expires on 5/20/2015.

Scammers are finding more creative ways of getting money out of people who are uninformed. Doing a simple Google search when you get an iffy email about something could save you hundreds of dollars.