I received a so-called renewal for my domain name today. It’s of course bogus but it got me thinking about how sometimes these scams look official and legitimate when they are nothing of the sort. So how can you tell what’s right and what’s wrong and what should you do to try and prevent yourself from getting taken? Here are a few thoughts.
Keep a master list of the main providers of your web services.
I always explain to my clients that websites are a lot like your cell phone. First, your phone number is a like your domain name. That number can be ported to any carrier that you use (i.e. US Cellular, AT&T) which is like your hosting company (where your website lives). Then on top of that, you choose what type of phone you use (i.e. iPhone or Android) which is like the program you use to run your website (i.e. WordPress, Wix, etc.).
So, here are the main three things you need to keep track of:
Domain Registrar
Your domain name has to be registered with one of the many companies who manage domain names. You’ll rent that domain name in yearly increments. The further out you go, the less expensive it is per year. I would also strongly suggest you purchase privacy protection on your domain name to insulate your personal contact information from the public. I use Namecheap who includes privacy protection in their pricing. It’s just one small thing you can do to keep the chances for scammers to contact you to a minimum. You’ll also get correspondence that asks you to update your ICANN data. That’s the group who oversees all the domain registrars around the world and basically does all the paperwork on who owns what.
Hosting Company
Once you have your domain name, you’ll need somewhere for your website to live. That would be a host. It’s a physical server somewhere that will contain all the files you need to run your website. Pay attention to how many people are on one server, your bandwidth and the amount of disk space you get. All these things together factor into how much you’ll pay. Most companies let you pay monthly and will have price breaks for annual agreements. I use Nexcess for my hosting and have been super happy with them. They have incredible support and all of the sites I host run fast and without errors.
Email Service Provider
Some hosting companies offer email mailboxes and forwards. My suggestion to you is to use a paid email service. Email is an essential form of communication that should be treated professionally. Paid services help you make sure your email makes it to its destination and limit the amount of spam you get. I use and have been extremely happy with Fastmail. They charge per user instead of per email address like Google so you can manage multiple domains and email address all within your account. Their spam servers have been fantastic as well. I used to get a minimum of 100+ spam messages a day. I think I’m down to 3-5. Success!
Some clues this might be a scam or misleading you
When you’re dealing with an email, be sure to look at who is sending it to you. Not just the name but the email ADDRESS. For instance, if you get an email from amazon.domainservices.com, that is NOT amazon.com. When you have a domain separated with dots, those are called “subdomains”. The actual domain is going to be the one before the dot com (or whatever). So in this case, it’s really domainservices.com who’s emailing you. Also watch for special characters. Things like funky looking a’s or other letters. More often than not, the emails are just junk emails. Just go ahead and delete it and don’t waste any more time on it.
The notice I got today was for a “directory listing”. While the practice of selling listings isn’t illegal and some might very well be legitimate, this one in particular works really hard to make it SEEM like it’s a domain renewal. They’re hoping that I don’t read any of the fine print and just send in my money to renew the domain. Disregard and throw it in the trash!
If you have a trusted web designer/provider, ask them. I encourage people to text me a photo of the item they got in the mail or in their email and I’ll let them know if it’s legit. It’s getting harder and harder to spot the fakes these days – don’t take the chance.
