FTC halts domain-name registration scam

news.idg.no

14 points·AndrewWarner··7 comments

How embarrassing that this is a Canadian export. I got one of these things in the mail (from "Domain Registry of Canada", cunningly decorated with a red-and-white icon to look vaguely governmental). It was so well done that it took me a few minutes to figure out that it was bullshit. I was so angry that I wrote to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority to complain, not so much on my own behalf as for all the non-technical website owners out there who don't stand a chance of figuring out that they're being hoodwinked into transferring their registration over to crooks at 3-4 times market rate. The agency wrote me back saying "unfortunately" the scammers weren't technically registrars -- whatever that means -- but that they thanked me for my complaint and would add it to their pile.

Why can't they stop Domain Registry of America then?

(who also strangely started in Canada and then relocated)

I get these in Australia...

It must work a reasonable amount of the time, otherwise the international postage wouldn't be worth it.

When are they going to do anything about domain kiting, then?

I was under the impression that the nonrefundable ICANN fee drastically reduced kiting.

what, and they only had to pay back $10,000 of the millions of dollars they took?

My thought as well.

So, blow through about $4.3 million in money from your scam, pay back $10k, and oh, they can't scam people using the scam they used that was already illegal.

I'm seriously in the wrong business, with the wrong ethics.

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