We have received a number of phone calls in the past 24 – 48 hours regarding a domain name scam.
A UK company, European Domain Solutions, has been ringing Irish businesses to scare them into registering domain names. They will try to charge you upwards of £150 per domain (over €200!) to register the domains, which is several times what we charge.
If you are contacted by any UK companies offering domain names or trying to persuade you to register domain names please be careful. This kind of scam happens every few months and costs companies money that they could have invested elsewhere.
The kind of line they will use is that a 3rd party has contacted them wanting to register a domain name that is closely linked to your business.
They will offer to “protect” you for a “nominal” fee.
A sample email that one client received is below (identifying details have been removed):
With reference to our telephone conversation regarding an unrelated party wishing to register :-
www.somename.com
www.somename.net
www.somename.eu
The prices are as follows:-
For a 5 year registration: £150 per name (£30 per annum)
For a 10 year registration: £250 per name (£25 per annum)
Included in the package you will have unlimited e-mail facilities if you so wish, we would interlink the names into your current web site or if at any point you wanted to put web pages behind the names we would give you all the web space with full technical support to host that site for the duration of the registration.
At the end of the registration period you will be invited to renew automatically. Registrations will prevent the third party using your company name on the internet or moving on to another registrar without consulting yourselves.
Please contact me as soon as possible on +44 (0)870 XXX XXXX
Kindest Regards
About the Author: Michele Neylon
