If you don’t own any domain names, you can skip this article.  If you do own one or more, I wanted to give you a quick heads-up about “legal” but shady practices so you can avoid domain scams.

I’ve gotten a lot of these emails lately:

Subject: “Domain Notification for: www.yourdomain.com This is your Final Notice of Domain Listing”

… and it looks very official and kind of scary.

Also it’s kind of a scam.

While not illegal, these emails try to scare you into any number of things. They run from domain “listing” which happens anyway when you launch a website to “Final Renewal Notice” where you would end up transferring the domain to their system.

These scams are possible because when you register a domain it’s a publicly available record. While you can make it private but Google thinks you’re hiding something and it hurts your rankings.

Here are 2 easy things to help keep you safe:

  1. Know what company your domains are registered with. If you have some registered at more than one place (GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, etc.), consolidate them to one account at the company you’re most comfortable with.
  2. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. For example, if it’s from a company you’ve never heard of and they want you to pay with BitCoin it’s probably a scam. If you’re not 100% sure, it’s probably a scam.

Hope this helps!

Michael Duff