I just received an email which has to be one of the more insidious scam attempts I’ve seen in a while. I’m talking it about it here in hopes that it might save somebody from making a potentially costly mistake.
The email told me that one of my domains was about to expire (which it is) and gave me a link to click on to renew it. There’s just one problem: the domain is registered at 1and1 and is set to automatically renew, so I instantly suspected a scam attempt.
I looked at the email and noticed that it contained a link to a place called DomainRenewalOnline dot com (WARNING! DO NOT VISIT THAT SITE!). Thankfully (just a few minutes after I received this email) the website is not available (and I hope it stays this way). Nevertheless, this was more than enough to convince me that this email was simply an attempt to trick me into doing something I don’t really want to do — and it got reported as both spam and as a phishing attempt to Google.
So what was the email all about? Without visiting the site I can only speculate, but having seen lots of this in the past, my speculation is at least somewhat accurate:
* They want me to transfer my domain to their registration service, which probably costs a lot more than what I pay at 1and1 (current prices are about $6 per year for a .com domain).
* They wanted to steal my domain name (possibly while taking my renewal money) so that they could try to sell it or use it host malware and infect any visitors to that website.
* They simply wanted my credit card information so that they could steal my identity.
* Some (or all) of the above.
Lessons to be taken from this:
1. NEVER click on a link in an email you were not expecting. EVER. And while it didn’t apply here, NEVER open an attachment that you weren’t expecting, even if you think you know the sender (their computer could be infected with malware or somebody could have forged their email address).
2. KNOW your business. In this case, I knew that my domains were registered at 1and1 so this email immediately looked suspicious.
3. Don’t believe anything you read in an email. Anybody can (and will) send you email, so always verify — via reliable sources (and most definitely not some stranger’s site on the Internet!) — anything you read in an email.
Thanks for listening,
Tom
P.S. — OK, what’s fair is fair… If you don’t know me, why should you believe me about DomainRenewalOnline? You are right to be skeptical, but keep in mind that I’m not asking you to take any positive action; I’m suggesting that you simply avoid this outfit based on what I, a certified computer security professional, observed and analyzed. In this case, the right thing to do would be to talk to your domain registrar and verify that your domain names are “good”. And I hope that by giving you good, solid suggestions on this website that you’ll slowly come to trust what I say. I need to earn your trust and I thank you for every opportunity you give me to do that.