Scam – Photography domains for sale
In addition to the commonly found over-payment scams that target photographers, and the Scam: Domain name registration / SEO service registration scams, there are scams that try to sell you domain names they don’t own.
Here is an example that crops up regularly, where a domain with important keywords is offered for sale. WebnameSolution is just one of the companies that try their devious hand at this.
The best advice I can give here, is that you do your homework first and find out who actually owns the domain name! Do a whois on the domain, and use other methods to see if the domain is legitimately for sale.
Scam invoices
I also have to add this — scam invoices. Here is an example by LocaDomain – an invoice for a relatively small amount, that needs to be paid to ostensibly prevent your website expiring. It may be an obvious scam perhaps, but I know of one acquaintance who wasn’t so tech savvy, that just paid for this. Be careful out there!
Related articles
- Over-payment scam / Family reunion scam
- Photography scam / how photographers are scammed
- E-mail scammers targeting photographers
- How scammers are trying to rip photographers off
- Scam: Domain name registration / SEO service registration
If you own domains, watch out for Domain Registry of America. They go through the trouble of snail mailing a bill for domain registry. Basically, they get your info off your domain’s whois info and send you a statement a few months out from when your domain expires. The “statement” is an agreement to transfer your domain to their registry. I warn people about this one because our office manager paid the statement one time and I had some unpleasant telephone calls with the company.
As far as Nigerian scammers go, if you get really bored and have the urge to pull one over on scammers, there are sites devoted to scam baiting like 419 Eater. The photos are pretty entertaining.
Pen .. I had forgotten about this one! This is a huge scam. You don’t particularly lose any money per se, but they do hijack your account from your original registrar. And that’s a really awful move to pull.
I bought a new domain name, and a day later this scam rolled in: