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Romanian Holiday
Wed, 11/18/2009 - 13:57 — Josh Bourne — Permalink
I just returned from a trip to Romania to visit friends and hunt geese, pheasant and partridge. I really enjoyed my time in the countryside down the Danube River. We also spent a day in Bucharest, a beautiful city with striking architecture and charming streets. It even has its own Arc de Triomphe, which, along with other French influences, gave the city the nickname of “Little Paris” in the early 1900s. One of my favorite spots in the city was the bar pictured here, Carul cu Bere, which reminded me of the inside of a cathedral.
Will “Bank” Get Banned in .SE?
Wed, 10/14/2009 - 08:41 — Josh Bourne — PermalinkAccording to a recent article in Web Host Industry Review, the Swedish Bankers’ Association lobbied the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (Post och Televerksstyrelsen) to prevent Internet users from registering domain names containing the word “bank” in the .SE ccTLD. The goal of the initiative was to allow only legitimate banks to register domains containing this term, which would cut down on fraud and illegal phishing attempts. According to this theory, consumers would know to trust only domains containing the word “bank” with their financial and account information, because only authorized banks will be able to own those domains.
The problem is that banning the term “bank,” or censoring the content of domain names in any way, simply will not work to prevent fraud. In fact, the initiative may backfire.
Phishing and other scams will still be able to easily take advantage of Internet users through the use of tactics such as spoofing emails from domain names, whether or not they contain words such as “bank.” At the same time, because of the initiative, people may be less diligent about keeping an eye out for potential scams—customers will be operating under the assumption that any correspondence or interaction with a domain name containing “bank” is safe. Cybercriminals are always adapting to new obstacles in the domain name space and it is overly simplistic to think this measure will protect Internet users’ financial information.
Scamming, Renewed
Wed, 10/07/2009 - 12:37 — Josh Bourne — PermalinkI received an email reminding me that the domain name truecostofcybersquatting.org had expired, and offering me the chance to renew it through a body called “ISP Renewal.” I found this odd, seeing as I had originally registered the domain with GoDaddy, and as far as I could tell, ISP Renewal had no affiliation with the registrar.
I did some more searching online and found that other people had received similar emails offering to renew recently expired domains. In each case, the renewal service had no ties to the registrar through which they had obtained the domain. And in almost every email, ISP Renewal was offering to renew the domain for around $80. One recipient of the email pointed out that ISP Renewal asks domain owners to give out their login information, which led him to believe that the group’s underlying goal is to steal the domains once it gains access.
Regardless of whether or not stealing domains is the ultimate goal, it is clear that these emails from ISP Renewal are a scam, and domain name owners should keep a wary eye out. It may not be immediately obvious that ISP Renewal is not a legitimate service. Do not be taken off guard if you have a domain name that has recently expired – acting quickly, without thinking, in order to avoid losing your domain plays right into ISP Renewal’s scheme.
We’re a lot smaller than the companies we serve, yet the various renewal scams that target FairWinds are the same scams that target bigger brands. We’re also targets of the same “tip” emails that frequently target bigger brands—these emails, which tend to come from China and Hong Kong, claim to give us a heads-up about ccTLDs containing our brand that will be registered to a third party unless we act quickly to register the domains ourselves. As a small company that specializes in domain names, we quickly ignore these sorts of scams, bigger companies can end up wasting a lot of time when people are forced to drop whatever they’re doing and reassure the CEO that there’s nothing to worry about and nothing that needs to be done.
It’s really remarkable how these scammers have the resources to target the tens of thousands of businesses in the world, from big companies to small businesses like FairWinds. They must be making an awful lot of money for this to be possible, and the registrars and resellers involved in these scams must really be raking in profits. I wonder just how much spam they will send and just how far the fraud will go before it is stopped. ICANN should address this behavior to do away with the bad actors and discourage registrars and registrar resellers from future bad behavior.
