Sunday, August 05, 2018

After domain registration spam comes the domain renewal scam

Following on from the vast amount of spam I received after registering a domain last year, now that it's approaching renewal time I am receiving a significant number of scam offerings to renew (and somewhat covertly transfer to another very expensive registrar) my domain registration for another year at very inflated prices over what it would cost to simply renew at my original registrar when the time comes.

I have even received e-mails falsely claiming that my domain registration has already expired and that I need to urgently "click here" to renew.

In one case, I received physical mail to my home to do the same.

The prices quoted are often 5+ times the typical price to renew at any of the popular registrars. Once you renew at 5+ times the price, I imagine that the rate going forward would be at least that much.

I wonder how many of these go to businesses who simply pay them as they would any other invoice.

The amount of mental inventory and cross-checking required to identify and deflect scams these days can be significant and I'm not surprised that older people with declining mental faculties fall prey to them (though maybe not the ones from the government demanding payment on iTunes).

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