Recently a client asked me to look into a suspicious correspondence received concerning their website. In this particular case, my client received a fax from a company called “US Domain Protection” at 130 Church St Suite 280, NY, NY 10007 www.USDomainProtection.com that says they had until 06/25/09 to reply or they could loose rights to their domain.. The fax was full of legal-speak, with threatening phrases like “protecting a domain registrant” and warnings like “you are required to advise the domain notification processor of your intent to (a) secure this domain name or (b) release your first right to use preference”. This all sounds very official and in need of immediate action. I was immediately suspicious since this “Final Notice” came by fax.

First, I looked up the domain registry information for our client and found that it was registered until 2010 with a reputable company to make sure that the domain was in no real danger. (You can check your domain name expiration date yourself: Go to: http://whois.domaintools.com/ and enter your domain name. If someone tells you your domain name is going to expire, don’t take their word for it, verify this yourself with this free, easy tool.) Satisfied that the domain was safe, I looked up the company the fax was from to find out what kind of scam they are running. US Domain Protection has a website that was all about protecting domain registrations and looks all legal and official and includes links to legitimate resources to further confuse people. I ran a search on their domain registration ( http://whois.domaintools.com/usdomainprotection.com) and found that they are part of a group of about 465 other domains . The domain has also been moved around on 7 unique name servers over 8 months which is particularly suspicious and leads me to believe that they have been kicked off a number of hosting accounts due to complaints. Also, this domain was created on November 05, 2008 and expires on November 05, 2009. I also checked out the phone number 1-800-690-1269 online and found that a number of people have had similar and bad experiences with the company. In fact, one person reported receiving the fax, and when unable to reach the person who manages their domain name, returned the call and was told they needed to pay the $35 by credit card to keep it. They were charged $350 instead of $35 and later found out that the domain name doesn’t actually expire until 2010. This was a scam, but the credit card company wouldn’t take the charge off and they were told them to call the company back and cancel the transaction. Since the company wouldn’t answer the phone, they couldn’t cancel the transaction and learned an expensive lesson.

Copy of scam fax from US Domain Protection

So if you get one of these notices, rest assured it has nothing to do with the domain name you currently own. Call it trash, phishing scam, or simply fraud. If you receive an email or fax like this, fill out a FTC complaint HERE.