Domain Name Solicitation Scams Have Been Pretty Brazen Lately. Here’s What To Do About Them.
Originally posted on Linkedin 09/01/2022
Heading into the crux of the disinformation age, the abundance of scams, schemes, rip-offs, and bogus robo-call solicitations shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone. But even being as common as they are, they have not lost their ability to be more exasperating than a cockroach infestation in a New York City apartment where the landlord doesn’t return your phone calls.
Midnight text messages hawking interest-only mortgages. Bankruptcy consolidation. Email phishing expeditions. Sextortion. Shady charities that make their way onto GoFundMe. Fraudulent callers posing as agents of government entities. Cryptocurrency memecoin peddlers. High-profile legal defense funds. The list goes on and on.
While there’s never been a period in human history where unscrupulous opportunists haven’t tried to get something for nothing, technology has expanded the geographic distribution of their potential marks. Conmen are no longer limited to plastic smiles and reassuring handshakes, cooked books, and promises of 40 percent returns; they haven’t been for some time now. When it’s possible to reach millions of people rather than a few hundred, scam artists these days don’t have to be particularly motivated or even persistent. They just have to be broad. Access to bulk data has never been easier, and even if they get upwards of a million dead ends, all they need are a few dozen takers to get away like bandits before the cease and desist letters pile up at their doorstep. As the scams and swindles have become more pervasive, they’ve gotten more brazen, too.
A con that’s gained some traction more recently is the domain name invoice scam. Some faceless company with a PO Box will send business owners a mailer that looks deceptively like an invoice, paired with misleading statements about necessary payments to keep your business domain name active.
Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot you can do about these scams other than ignore them, throw them into the trash, or feed them to your paper shredder. I’ve personally received several of these domain scam solicitations, the latest one being so brash that at first glance it appeared as if they were trying to sell me a domain name I already own. But if you peruse these letters and the fine print therein, most of these companies are technically not doing anything illegal.
It’s a stretch to call any of these solicitations legitimate, but most of them are merely offering to list your domain name on their own domain directory website for an annual fee. Even if their site exists and seems legit, it’s still a huge waste of money. At best, you’ll get no extra Internet traffic or business from taking them up on their offer. At worst, they’ll have your credit card info and rack up charges on Amazon and Uber before you even notice. So if you run a business with an online presence, there’s no reason to pay for your domain name twice. Following good SEO practices and staying on top of website updates will do much more for increasing traffic and sales versus paying a shell company to list your domain on a website that nobody will ever visit. All they’re really offering you is a chance to give them your money for nothing.
There are times, however, when these solicitations go too far. While most of them are not actionable, anything that uses threatening or harassing verbiage, misrepresents who they are without any fine-print disclaimers, or asks for your social security number, you’re well within your rights to file a report with the Federal Trade Commission. Even if you can’t stop all the scams flooding your inbox, forwarding them to the appropriate agency might just make some of the fraudsters seriously consider another career path.