Name scam spoofs ICANN, worse than domain renewal scam — Latest domain

Scammer sends fake renewal notices with goal of getting your credit card information.

ICANN may have shut down Domain Registry of America for now, but fresh scams pop up just regarding every day.

Joseph Peterson sent one example to me today that I haven’t seen ahead of.

He received an email with the subject line “something.com EXPIRATION!”, in which something.com matched one of his domains. Although his domain doesn’t expire until next year, the email claims it expires October 14.

Interestingly, the email advertises that renewing the domain name only costs only $3 for a year (more on that later). If you click the payment link, you’ll see a page like this:

Here are some interesting things regarding this scam:

• The site is designed to look like ICANN; it uses the logo and even an ICANN copyright notice on the bottom. If you click the “News & Media” link at the top, you’ll get recent ICANN stories.
• The prices are all well below wholesale. This perpetrator isn’t going to actually renew (and transfer) your domain if you pay; it’s just trying to get some money out of you and/or your credit card information.
• The site uses the URL structure domaiinregistration.com/?domain=something.com&date=10-14-2014. Just changing the URL changes what shows up on the page for domain and registration dates.

domaiinregistration.com was registered on September 18 to someone using an address in China at registrar Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

Of course, as soon as the domain name is shut down, the perpetrator just has to register another domain name, upload the site, and continue emailing people based on their whois info.