Name grabbers working domain scam

By ADAM GIFFORD

Internet name holders are being warned to watch out for a scam which could see them unsuspectingly switch their domain name registrar.

Richard Shearer, general manager of New Plymouth-based registrar Freeparking.co.nz, said several customers had received faxes from a company calling itself Domain Registry of Australia inviting them to send credit card details to renew their website.

Taking up the offer meant the domain name would be automatically transferred, with no guarantee existing standards of service would be maintained.

"They are sending out these phony renewal notices well before we sent ours," Shearer said.

"Typically we start contacting customers 45 days before their names expire."

The fax gave a renewal price of US$25 or A$47, more than the $49.95 Freeparking charged.

"They are trying to make it look as if they are working out of Australia, but the phone is answered by call centre agents in Ontario, Canada, and there is a similar site targeting Europe," said Shearer.

He said the technique of grabbing other companies' customers, called bumping, was familiar from the North America long-distance phone carrier industry, and had spread to domain registrars over the past year.

"A couple of the major registrars ended up getting fined and being forced to send corrective messages to customers," he said, "but it looks as if this company has decided to try it on in the rest of the world. What we tell our customers is that if they get communications like this they should bin them, because it is not how this business operates.

"Such communications are almost always scam attempts, because it is not legal for us to mine the registry database for such a marketing campaign."

Shearer said that when Freeparking called the number listed on the fax it was told the parent company of Domain Registry of Australia was enom.com, the sixth-largest registrar in the United States.

"We have been unable to confirm if that is true," he said.

Another scammer, Melbourne-based Internet Name Group, is now in the hands of administrators.

Administrator Peter Goodin of Melbourne accounting firm Brooke Bird has advertised in Australian newspapers seeking buyers for the company's customer lists and proprietary software.

He said the company's 2000 creditors were owed more than $1 million. Many had paid several years in advance for domain names, even though .au names can be issued for only two years and .nz addresses for one year.

Internet Name Group, which also traded as Internet Name Protection, used a copy of the .nz registry to solicit name holders in New Zealand and invited them to also register the .com or .net.nz versions of the same name.

Its offer looked similar to an invoice, and people might have paid thinking they were getting a renewal notice from their existing provider.