I registered a new domain name yesterday: geekonaharley.org. My current vague plan is to move my motorcycle-related posts from here to the new blog in an effort to make the ‘eclectic’ nature of my posts slightly less so. I.e.: people interested in my motorbike related posts won’t get any cat or politics related posts mixed in.
But that isn’t what this post is about. Instead it is about the scam email that arrived in my email inbox today, the day after registering my new domain.
The email looked fairly legitimate, but the content didn’t make sense to me. There is no process that I’ve ever heard of before that requires payment to register a domain for search engines like Google.
Notice the ‘expires tonight!!’ urgency- really? Smelling a rat, I did a little bit of Googling. And sure enough, this is another in a long line of scams intended to get money and credit credentials out of people.
- Google’s own John Mueller- ignore domain name search registration scams
- 12Wonder (a hosting service) knowledge base- there is no such thing as a ‘domain name search registration’
- and this post from Dangerous Common Sense- there is a special circle of hell…
So… domain name search registration is snake oil sold by scammers trying to get your credit card number for a totally bogus product. Beware…