For those of you who are now the proud owners of your own website domains, there comes with it a whole new level of spam.\u00a0 It’s important to be on your guard for seemingly legitimate requests or inquiries, especially in a field that is new to you and in a “language” that may be unfamiliar to you, but that may be phishing scams.<\/p>\n
A phishing scam is a legitimate-looking request from a company or individual that is not legitimate, requesting personal and financial information from you that will be used in nefarious ways.\u00a0 Many of these scams, in the form of emails, comes complete with the a legitimate company’s logo, colors and other distinguishing details, but which ultimately direct you to a site that is completely unrelated to the legitimate business.<\/p>\n
Many of the simpler\u00a0scams are clever and deceptive, but can be\u00a0rejected by knowing that no financial or governmental agency will ever send you an email with a link to update your personal or financial information.\u00a0 Never, ever, ever!\u00a0 They may send you an email asking you to go to their official site, but never, ever send you a link to\u00a0do that.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Some of these new scams, however, are clever in that they are not asking you so much for personal information as they are asking you a question that seems legit but still requires you to contact them on a matter that is confusing.\u00a0 In this case, a “company” (So far it’s been AsiaDNR, Auditing Department) sends an email stating that another company has applied for the registration of a bunch of domains with the same domain name as your, but with different extensions, such as .uk, .asia, .tw, etc.\u00a0 They are “afraid” of trademark and domain infringement and want you to contact them if you do not know the company that is trying to buy up all these domains.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, they want you to contact them so they can sell you the remaining domains.\u00a0 Also, you’ll forever be in their database for future, prolific\u00a0spam, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.<\/p>\n
If you should get one of these emails, and your trusty webmaster is not immediately available, please do a google search on some of the keywords in the email, or\u00a0on the subject line.\u00a0 This will, at least, bring you to alternate opinions of the situation, and perhaps keep you from responding posthaste.<\/p>\n