Skip to main content

Domain dangers

These days most authors have websites. I have to confess to a mind-splitting eight (though to be fair, they aren't all about me and my work). I'll take a look at them here someday, but that's not what this post is about.

This morning in the mail I received a nice, offical looking document. It starts like this:


Harmless enough. However plenty of people would take up their offer to renew. And here's the snag. They aren't the people who handle my domain name registrations. They are just taking advantage of the public information available with any website to try to fish for business. They may well legitimately re-register the website for me (though there's no guaranteeing this)... but they aren't the people who actually register my site.

What were the give-aways? The postmark was Jamaica, which seems a little odd for a company that expects you to send your payment to a UK address. The company appears to be American - yet my domain is registered through a UK company. Oh, and unfortunately they got the renewal date wrong, using out-of-date records. If you get a request to renew that isn't from your ISP, or whoever handles your domains, don't pay it - query it with the people who handle things for you. It may well be a scam.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown19 October 2008 at 19:29

    Yep Brian,

    I got the same letter yesterday. I got a similar one about a year ago from the same company.

    Certainly appears to be phishing spam.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg20 October 2008 at 10:36

    I can just imagine lots of businesses not really bothering to read the detail and just paying up.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp
117 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense
6 comments
Read more