When you register a domain name it is common to start receiving scam phishing and unsolicited emails and phone calls. This is because the personal details you are required to be provided during the registration process, along with other technical domain information such as details of nameservers, domain registration and renewal dates  becomes  public data on the WHOIS database – unless you make the decision to purchase privacy protection although for TLD such as .com.au privacy protection is not available due to legal requirements.

Phishing or spoof emails attempt to trick you into clicking on links which will redirect you to a website and ask you to confirm or update personal information such as credit card details, account numbers, or other information the scam company may already have. They may have some of your personal details correct from a completely different source such as domain registration which may add to their credibility.

Phishing emails generally try to look like the legitimate provider’s email but when you look carefully the  From and reply to address is not the legitimate providers email address. Often the grammar and spelling is incorrect or very poor and the layout slightly or very inconsistent with the real emails.

Another extremely common scam email that many domain owners becomes target for is where scam emails and fake letter invoices are sent which look like domain registration renewals but are nothing but a scam!! They don’t come from your domain registrar and don’t even look like they do but they do look legitimate. These types of scam are one of the many reasons to have a good relationship with your registrar so that you can easily query invoices or emails. These scams emails and letter offer a genuine sounding but non-existent product or service such as “Traffic Generator” or “Google VIP Support”. An example is below.