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Domain renewal scam moves to robocalls

by — Uncategorized 3 Comments

One perpetrator of renewal scam is now using robocalling.

Picture of man angry at phone robocall

Almost everyone who has registered a domain name has received scam renewal notices. The notices, sent via email or postal mail, try to trick you into renewing your domain name with a company other than your domain registrar.

Now this scam has moved to robocalls.

Here’s a voicemail a Domain Name Wire reader received today:

Um, hi. This is Karen. This is an urgent message. Your domain registration is set to expire. We’ve been trying to reach you regarding your business domain renewal. You can use our automated system to renew your domain quickly when you get a moment to call us back. Please, return this call at 1-888-202-5979…

You can listen to the audio here:

If you call the number back, the system checks your phone number against its database. I called from Skype and got a message that it was unable to locate the domain name based on my caller ID and asked me to enter my phone number.

 

How early should domain name registrars auto renew domains?

by — Domain Registrars 10 Comments

My domain registrars auto-renew anywhere from the expiration time to 60 days in advance.

It’s smart for domain name registrants to place their domain names on auto-renew. This means your domain name registrar will renew your domain name each year without action on your part. It prevents domains from accidentally deleting when you overlook a notice or forget to log in and renew.

I think it’s interesting how far in advance domain registrars renew domain names.

  • GoDaddy waits until the domain name is expired before renewing the domain.
  • Hexonet renews about 5 days before the expiration.
  • Uniregistry and Enom auto-renew one month before the domain expires.
  • At the extreme (at least of registrars I use) is 101Domain, which renews 60 days in advance.

There are benefits to early renewals and benefits to last-minute renewals. If you have a large portfolio, you might appreciate not being charged until the domain expires to minimize your cash outflows.

At the same time, an earlier renewal provides more time to rectify any billing issues (such as an outdated credit card number) before a domain enters the deletion cycle.

60 days? That’s a bit much. (I should note that some ccTLDs on 101Domain require early renewal from the ccTLD administrator, but this isn’t the case with .com). But I’m curious what other people believe is a good timeframe for registrars to auto-renew domains.

Track your domains even after you decide not to renew them

by — Expired Domains 5 Comments

You never know when a domain’s chances of selling will increase.

I renew many of my domains six months or more in advance. If I know I’m going to renew them, I like to knock them out in bulk so I don’t have to worry about them and deal with reminder notices.

When I’m on the fence about a domain I usually wait until the last couple months to decide if I want to renew it. I run analytics on them to determine the likelihood of them selling, see if people have registered the domains in other extensions, and check how much pay-per-click revenue they make. I often make a delete decision a couple of months before expiration and turn off autorenew.

But I learned an important lesson recently with one of my domains. I originally registered the domain back in 2004. That was before Google had figured out that it should take search juice away from expired domains. Back then I’d create crappy sites on domains and, at one point, was earning over $1,000 a day in Adsense revenue across lots of these expired domains. Click here to continue reading…