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A lot of my clients over the past few weeks have been contacting me about domain renewal notices. Wondering if their domain is up for renewal because they got some kind of notice.
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They have been receiving these notices in snail mail, email and even in the contact form on their websites.
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Many times website domains are registered on a separate service than where the website is hosted. So it can be confusing.
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Most notices say it's time to renew on generic company letterhead like "Domain Registry" or "Internet Domain Service" or "Domain Registration". One message I saw this week went so far as to say "YOUR DOMAIN WILL BE TERMINATED WITHIN 24 HOURS!" This is confusing at best and can be a bit scary at worst.
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This scam works by counting on you being confused - and not remembering where your domain is registered. It's very common that website owners don't remember where their domain is registered because they renew the registration at most once a year - or someone else in the company who isn't the original purchaser of the domain registration is now in charge of that part of the business.
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If you pay these scammers for "renewal" whether it is time for your domain registration renewal or not, your domain will be transferred to them (if they are a real registrar, they may not be). You might have years left at your original registrar. So paying this new one is unnecessary, not to mention you may not have wanted to switch away from your current registrar.
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- realize that this type of scam exists
- keep good records, just like you do with the rest of your business, of where your domains are registered - complete with login credentials for anything to do with your website. Then when you get a notice and you need to refresh your memory, you know where to check to verify the domain registrar.
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I realized a couple years ago that my new clients never had this information ready and in one place most of the time. So now Fresh Eggs clients get a Website Owner's Manual when their site launches. This is a document with all their website information and credentials for registrar, host, site login details and recommended tasks to keep their website running smoothly.
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