This post is about domain name scams, in particular the fake renewal letter that is made to look like a bill for your domain but is really an attempt to move it to another registrar. It is one of the very oldest scams going and it has been running for well over a decade. The amounts have come down and the wording has been softened, but the purpose has never changed: to get you to move your domain to a different registrar at a much higher price, when all you actually wanted to do was renew it.
Domain name scams: what the fake renewal letter looks like
An email or a printed letter, timed to land around the date your domain comes up for renewal. It is not a random mailshot — whoever sent it has looked your domain up in the public register, which is why the dates and the details are right.
The print quality is good. The layout looks like an invoice. Your domain name is on it, spelled correctly, with a genuine expiry date. There is enough real information on the page to convince most people it came from whoever they registered with.
How to tell
- It is worded as an offer or a notice, not an invoice — read the small print and it usually says so somewhere
- The price is far higher than you normally pay, often several times over
- The company name is not the one you actually registered the domain with
- It asks you to sign and return something, or to pay by a date that is not your real renewal date
- It arrived by post, which almost no real registrar does any more
What to do
Throw it away. That is genuinely the whole answer — there is nothing to reply to and nothing to cancel, because you never had an account with them.
If it has made you uneasy, the safe move is to ignore what arrived and go and look for yourself. Log in to the registrar you actually use, check the expiry date there, and renew from inside your own account. Never renew a domain by clicking a link in a letter or an email that arrived unprompted.
If you have already paid one
You are not the first and it is not as bad as it feels. What usually happens is that the domain gets transferred to the new registrar at their price — you have overpaid, but you have not lost the name. Tell us and we will check where the domain is actually sitting, whether it is still yours, and what it takes to move it back somewhere sensible.
The simplest protection
Know who your registrar is, and have the renewal on auto. A domain that renews itself from an account you control cannot be rescued by a letter, because there is nothing left for the letter to rescue. If you are not sure who holds yours, ask us and we will find out in a couple of minutes.
