Domain action/bidding "scam"

[Albert Wiersch]

This was an interesting "scam" that I was contacted about regarding the domain name "htmlvalidators.com".

I received multiple messages from supposedly the same person (had the same first name and no last name), but all the emails were from this name at a different domain. The emails basically tried to get me to go to a website and bid on the htmlvalidators.com domain name (which it looks like was not being renewed and had a high probability of becoming available). The emails implied that the only way to get this domain was to bid through them, and the minimum bid was $97.

So I used my registrar's (GoDaddy.com) domain backordering service instead, because htmlvalidators.com seemed like a nice domain to acquire, which I could then redirect to htmlvalidator.com. The backordering service was able to grab the domain name for me.

If I had bid, then I would have paid a lot more and supported this questionable service. Why would they contact me unsolicited and send mail from so many different domain names? Also, the mailing address listed at the bottom of all the emails were mostly different addresses. Very strange.

I also had a friend who bid on a domain he wanted. He said the company he was doing the bidding on wasn't even able to acquire the domain. It seems he was bidding on something that the bidding company did not yet have.

So beware of these domain bidding "scams".

It would be interesting to hear from anyone else who might have experienced something similar.

[Lou]

A couple of months ago got the same series of emails for a domain similar to a domain I have. Same story line.They got pushy as the cutoff date approached and passed. I thought one domain for a 2 year old was enough.

I see the brute force bots are back. Had to answer the security question again.