Scams

A few minutes ago, I received an interesting email from one Dan at DomainGuardSystem.com concerning a domain name I previously owned, a dot org. In this email, Dan is attempting to get me to pay him $99 for a domain name that he does not own. In fact, it is available on GoDaddy.com for a mere $7.69 a year, when used with the discount code zine3.

This type of scam is being played for one purpose: to take the hard earned money of unsuspecting people. Paying a price for a domain name that someone owns and that you wish to buy is one thing. Paying a huge sum of money for a domain name that is not owned is nothing short of a scam.

At the present time, it appears that Dan is targeting only fot org domain name owners. I did a search and found another person who received the same type of email, nearly word for word, at http://boston.conman.org/.

Here is the copy of the email, with the domain name left out.

From: dan@domainguardsystem.com
To: teddybearteam@aol.com
Subject: xxxxxxx.com for the owner of xxxxxxx.org
Date: 12/10/2008 10:16:40 P.M. Central Standard Time

Hi,

The domain xxxxxxx.com has recently become available for us so we are offering it to you, because you are the owner of its .org version.

Domain Guard System is intended to assist our clients with their promotion on the Internet. We use many methods to increase the effectiveness of a client’s presence on the Web. Securing .com domains for anyone using another extension for their site is one of them.

There are several reasons why owning a .com is of great importance for any domain holder:
- It’s in the essense of Internet: .com is most popular and widely used, and the typical user usually supposes that he/she will find you at xxxxxxx.com. A lot of companies and organizations who use other extensions as primary (.net for Web services or private sites, .org for non-profit organizations etc.) are securing .coms not to lose the visitors who are seeking them there. With .com, you will be free to use both your .org and .com so you will only gain visitors.
- By owning the .com, you will be sure to stay #1 in your own name space.

If you are interested in this domain, please act quickly, as we soon intend to bring it to the auction where the acquisition cost will be higher than now.

Please use the link below to discover the current cost of the domain, read more about the advantages of owning a .com and get information on the details of the purchase and domain transfer procedure:

Secure xxxxxxx.com now!

Best regards,
Dan Johnson
Domain Guard System
mailto: dan@domainguardsystem.com

Given the fact that this person seems only interested in making money off of unsuspecting domain name owners, it’s a good idea to ignore emails from him and if you want the domain name, simply go to GoDaddy or your preferred domain name registrar and buy the domain name there. This guy is pocketing about $90 per sale if you buy from him. He doesn’t own what he is trying to sell, he has a price set that is nonsense, and this screams SCAM.

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