Domain "registration" firms keep trying it on

Found on The Inquirer on Saturday, 13 March 2004
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UK businesses should beware of people trying to extract money for renewal of domain names meaning you may end up paying more money than you need to people you don't need to pay.

This morning, the INQUIRER got three letters from a company calling itself EU Registry Services, based in Cambridge, reminding us that we needed to renew theinquirer.net and theinquirer.org.

The letters start off in a scary tone, saying: "The domain name shown above is due for renewal. Please renew this domain immediately to ensure service continues uninterrupted. If payment is not made to the registry before the expiry date the domain is subject to immediate suspension and deletion without further notice".

While there's no web page address for "EU Registry Services", an email address to "help@renewalpayments.com" is supplied. A whois database entry shows this belongs to Dot Biz Domain Renewal, living in a PO Box at 287 Regent Street, London W1.

Scams like this are constantly tried. Some people send me copies via fax a few years ago, asking wheter those were legal or not. One or two filed a lawsuit against the scammers.