There is a new phishing email doing the rounds, masquerading as a Godaddy email. I received it this morning and have since notified Godaddy.

There are a few things that are interesting about this email:

1.It uses the actual Godaddy graphics on the Godaddy web server, so it looks real.

2. In the body of the message it says “Dear <your email address”.

3. It was sent to an email address on my server that doesn’t exist (normally I’d throw away those “catch all” emails, but not in this case).

4. The fake email was (spoofed) from sales at godaddy.com with a subject of “GoDaddy.com Order Confirmation”. So if you have a lot of automatic email rules that archive off these types of notices, it may find its way into your inbox, and you may never notice it.

5. FYI: The links go through to “dextersss-com-ua.1gb.ua/zzx.htm” – the webserver is live, but the site is currently producing a 404.

6. For the techo’s, SpamAssassin gave it a score of 17.223.

I only initially picked up on it because I didn’t recall ordering 300 .INFO domains. If that had of arrived during a bulk ordering process, I may have not noticed.

Given the fact it’s a bulk registration. Could this be a targetted email especially for domain investors? The average person isn’t going to register 300 domains! Of course, the other side of that thought process is that phishing emails are designed to be “clicked on”, so if a member of public sees it, they will probably freak out first, click it and then inadvertently hand over their credentials (login id and password).

What do you think? Have you received this email?

Over the years I’ve seen registrars come and go. One registrar that I really admire, is Godaddy. Bob Parsons has led the industry for many years and the recent stats published by Godaddy are simply amazing.

“GoDaddy now holds a near 50 percent market share of all active new domains registered in the world and is more than three times the size of its closest competitor.”

“Over the next twenty-five years, I see the Internet growing exponentially,” said Parsons. “Think about it, whether you are communicating, learning or conducting business, being on the Internet is where it’s all happening. I’d say if you aren’t online with your business, you really aren’t in the game.”

Congrats Bob.

Chinese State-Run Media is reporting that CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) is requesting that applicants must submit written applications to the registration agents.

The written materials must include an application form with an official seal, an enterprise business license and the registrant’s ID card.

Liu Zhijiang, vice director of CNNIC confirmed the news saying that the administration was determined to screen the applicant’s qualifications strictly to stop individuals obtaining domain names using fake information.

Its been reported that the announcement came after a report by China Central Television (CCTV) which critisized the registration process and linked it to the prevalence of pornographic websites.

Source: Global Times & China Daily.

Melbourne IT (ASX: MLB), have announced that they have been selected to manage Twitter’s domain name portfolio.

“Melbourne IT could not disclose the contract value but has conceded the Twitter account is reasonably small. Compared to some other clients that hold in excess of 10,000 domains, the social networking company is relatively new and is starting off with only a handful of critical names.”

The two year contract is believed to be centered around Melbourne IT’s Corporate Domain Management solution and includes protection against infringement and malicious web attacks.

Source: Melbourne IT & ARN.

When it comes to managing a large portfolio you really need to cut down on maintenance tasks. For that reason I usually renew my domains across multiple years. I also try to have a bunch of them renewing at the same time.

It’s Friday night and what am I doing? Renewing a few names of course! The price for switching a .info to Namecheap is $9.69. If you use the “switch2nc” coupon it comes down to $6.99 for 1 year.

You can see that it clearly says 1 year and the coupon code has been accepted (little box on the left hand side). Here is what happened when I selected 2 years:

The coupon is still there, but it doesn’t apply. In fact, it doesn’t even give you the $6.99 discounted rate for the first year! This isn’t news to the more experienced users, but its something I want to make people aware of. If you are up late (like I am) you may just miss/overlook basic maths at 1am.

While I can accept that a coupon is usually for 1 year and the reason coupons exist, is to get you to move your portfolio (or get you to buy other services), after all they are not making huge $$$ on this. My point is, why wouldn’t a registrar apply the coupon for multiple years or at least (at a minimum) give it to you for the first year?

Have you seen this type of activity anywhere else? If so, please post a comment and let me know.

While eating my hot cross buns this morning I received an email from Snapnames support. It seems that 4 months ago I won a domain at auction and did not receive the credentials from the registrar, Directi.

This wasn’t a pro-active step on the part of Directi or Snapnames; I had contacted Snapnames after winning the auction requesting their assistance to get the credentials. When I logged into Directi I noticed that auto-renew was conveniently turned OFF.

Here are the lessons I learned (again) from this experience:

1. Keep track of the domains you win at auction.
2. Ensure you are sent the credentials – if you don’t get them, follow up with the auction/backordering company.
3. Have your default DNS settings (at the auction company) point to your favorite parking company.
4. Add the domain name to your parking company a few days after you win the auction.
5. When you get the credentials, transfer the domain to your favorite registrar – that way you dont have domains spread everywhere.

Points 3 and 4 will ensure that when the transfer happens, you start earning $$$ immediately. The domain I won had traffic and was directed to my favorite parking company. Unfortunately I did not add it to my portfolio! As such, the parking company has made 4 months of revenue from it. This makes me wonder; what is the % of names pointing to a parking company that don’t have an owner? Must be a nice little earner for the parking company!

I eneded up transferring the name to NameCheap. While doing that, I tested out a few coupons. Here are the ones that work today:

SWITCH2NC – $6.99 transfers
7TULIPS – $6.99 transfers

Happy Easter!

Late yesterday I received an email notification from Snapnames regarding the termination of their relationship with The Names Registration, Inc. What was interesting to me, was the recommendation to transfer my names (that I had acquired through the Snapnames process) to another registrar.

The only problem with their email was that it didn’t tell me what domains were with that registrar. I didn’t know if it was 1 or 100. It turns out that the support staff at Snapnames couldn’t tell me either! Thank goodness I had kept all of my backordering emails, auction results and other little gems in an archive. A quick search found that I had previously transferred the (1) domain away.

— starts —

Our records show that you have registered one or more domain names at
The Names Registration, Inc.  SnapNames will be terminating its
relationship with The Names Registration, Inc.  While that will have no
direct impact on your name(s) registered with The Names Registration,
Inc we nonetheless recommend that you transfer your domain name(s) to
another registrar well before the name is set to expire.  We will assist
you in any way that we can, but please be aware that we have no ability
to control or influence the operation of The Names Registration, Inc.

If you have difficulty locating the domain names registered with
The Names Registration, Inc you may download your registration history
from your SnapNames account and search for The Names Registration, Inc.

SnapNames.com

--- ends ---

Did you get an email from Snapnames? How many domains did you transfer?

I just confirmed this a few minutes ago with CEO, Larry Kutscher.

Not all of their customers had been affected, but it appears that some of their systems had suffered service disruptions as a result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

For those that don’t know, this type of attack floods systems with traffic from various points across the internet. As such its impossible to effectively shut down.

Here is an extract from the email sent out to Register.com customers 10 mins ago:

“Services have been restored for most of our customers including hosting and email. However for some of our customers, services are not fully restored.  We know this is unacceptable.

We are using all available means to restore services to every one of our customers and halt this criminal attack on our business and our customers’ business. We are working round the clock to make that happen.

We are committed to updating you in as timely manner as possible, please check your inbox or our website for additional updates.

Thank you for your patience.”

I believe its great that Register.com notified their customers of this attack. Are you a register.com customer? Did you notice anything wrong? Feel free to post a comment.

As an entrepreneur and someone who donates to a wide variety of charities, I can’t help but notice when companies do things that are right. In fact, I go out of my way to support such companies, which is why I’m posting this.

Name.com just had a promotion where $.50 from every .ORG registered until 12/31/08 was donated to Kiva.org.  On top of that, they were selling .orgs for a crazy $6.49 – which means you should buy them anyway. In case you didn’t know, Kiva lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s the “teach the man to fish” approach using micro-transactions.

Earlier today I came across another headline – Verizon Wins $33 Million in Suit Over Domain Names. Apparently, “the default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by the Internet company, OnlineNic, was issued last Friday by United States District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel in San Jose, Calif. Judge Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses. Verizon sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizonwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.”

So, it got me thinking. What about donating a large chunk of that to charity? Of course I don’t know how much of the $33M will go in legal expenses. The point is (assuming they get the money) that Verizon have scored $33M. What about doing something good with a % of that?

It seems that the people sending the domain name postal mail spam have stopped for Christmas; time now to prepare for the electronic kind. Watch out kids, here it comes!

In order to educate consumers and protect the marketplace from this type of activity, I thought I’d post two examples that have recently popped into my inbox.

I’m just presenting the facts – judge for yourself.

Exhibit A – ZipDomains

I received the email below from i...@zipacquisitions.com. Their website (zipacquisitions.com) diverts to zipdomains.com and has i...@zipdomains.com as the contact.

Both domains are registered to:

Zip Domains i...@zipdomains.com. 233 Middleton Rd. Glenside Wellington 6037 NZ and have a US phone number +1 206-202-1813. Of course I had to call it – its just an automated answering service.

If you check out their website, there is a DNOA logo. However, neither email address can be found in DNOA profile lookup, yet they display the certified reseller logo on their site, without the link.

— Start Of Email —

Subject: edited-out-for-privacy.ORG

Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.

The domain name edited-out-for-privacy.COM is expiring and will be available to the public very soon.

We noticed that you own edited-out-for-privacy.ORG and felt that you may be interested.

We can assist in trying to acquire the domain name, as there are likely many interested parties competing for it.

We do not charge upfront, and the fee if we are successful is only $199 USD.

If you are interested, please let us know by December 10 at the latest.
— ends —

I own the .org and the .com is currently in PendingDelete status. So if I say “yeah go ahead”, they just backorder it for me. Who knows…get a few ignorant customers and it might be a nice little earner.

Exhibit B – Register.com

I received an email from register.com with a subject line of “Keep edited-out-for-privacy.COM  Up and Running”.

You can see the graphic below showing “Renewal Notice” in big orange letters. The only thing is that my domain name wasnt due for renewal for another 7 months! But hey, I can pay you $35 for a .com! Now that’s a bargain if I’ve ever seen one!

The ethical issue here is…. a person reading this may think its a domain name renewal notice (therefore thinking their domain is going to expire) and they should pay register.com $$$$. In countries that have relatively mature consumer protection laws (such as Australia) such an email may be regarded as misleading and deceptive conduct. Its important to note that I’m not a lawyer, this is just my opinion – based on receiving this email.

Have you noticed an increase in spam? Post a comment and let us know!