{"id":434,"date":"2014-07-18T23:01:24","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T03:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ndmtemp.flywheelsites.com\/?p=434"},"modified":"2015-03-23T20:33:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T00:33:10","slug":"how-to-identify-the-domain-registry-of-canada-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativedigitalmarketing.com\/how-to-identify-the-domain-registry-of-canada-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Identify the Domain Registry of Canada Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t typically get a lot of mail; all of my major bills and alerts are sent to me via email. The bulk of the physical mail I get is comprised of newsletters, catalogues and mail for people who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve previously lived at my place. When I received a light beige envelope resembling those the government uses for their notices, I was a little curious. Was the government sending me news that I was eligible for a new tax credit?<\/p>\n

Not quite.<\/p>\n

The sender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s address was Domain Registry of Canada and it looked very official with an image of a maple leaf next to their address:<\/p>\n

\"Domain<\/p>\n

One thing stood out to me about my address; I noticed that my last name was misspelled – and not just the usual all-one-word mistake, either.<\/p>\n

I opened up the letter and found this:<\/p>\n

\"Domain<\/p>\n

I have to say, I was pretty confused. Why was I getting a domain renewal notice from someone other than my registrar? Why was I being contacted – by mail, no less – about\u00c2\u00a0a domain that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s due to be renewed in December of this year? And why oh why was the renewal price $40.00 when the cost is typically around $11?<\/p>\n

The domain in question is one I use for testing purposes and one I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used in some time. I wondered how Domain Registry of Canada obtained my mailing address and then I realized my mistake: I likely did not set the WHOIS information on that domain to the privacy settings that I usually do.<\/p>\n

A quick search confirmed my suspicions; my forgetfulness had resulted in my information being made public, letting Domain Registry of Canada (and others like them) harvest my address to send me their letters.<\/p>\n

I logged into the necessary account and updated the WHOIS information for that domain to ensure that my information was no longer visible. I then visited the Domain Registry of Canada website. (I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be linking to them from here so as not to send them any traffic.)<\/p>\n

Their website is pretty simple and has the usual pages you would expect a registrar to have – Register a domain, Renew your domain, Search Engine submission, amongst others. With the red colours and Canadian flag as part of their header, I can see why people would think they were an official government site.<\/p>\n

I then did a Google search for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Domain Registry of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u009d + \u00e2\u20ac\u0153scam\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and sure enough, there were several results. Most of the them were blog posts and articles from people who had lost money as a result of receiving a letter similar to the one I got today. Other articles outlined the stories of people who lost their websites because they unknowingly transferred the site to Domain Registry of Canada. The Better Business Bureau also had a listing for the registrar<\/a> and not surprisingly, there have been a number of complaints against the company.<\/p>\n

What really made me pause when I first read the letter was that I thought it had to do with the domain for this site – which is, as you can see, .ca. All Canadian domains (.ca) are managed by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0When I received the quasi-offical looking envelope, I assumed that it was from CIRA. Of course, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Domain Registry of Canada hoped for, that i would be unsure and make a decision without fully checking things out.<\/p>\n

The company itself is a legitimate – albeit a very expensive – registrar. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re providing services at triple the price they typically are elsewhere. They even included a self-addressed envelope to facilitate the payment reaching them quickly. It was a very thorough and well done direct mail attempt at scamming me.<\/p>\n

How can you avoid falling for this type of scam?<\/h3>\n