The take out more domains scam……

This scam is very subtle, it preys on fear, uncertainty and doubt. If you are not regularly doing business in this field and receive a message like this, it can be quite distressing. Note that this email below is not actually asking you for anything, but it is begging you to reply. (click on the image to see a larger version of it).

How does it work?

I have deliberately changed the real domain name in question to homestart-czw.

The sender (who is probably real) claims that they wish to use homestart-czw as a keywork in Chinese domain names.

They know that there is a homestart-czw.org.uk and that is how they found it. Similar scams along this theme may claim ownership of copyright or trademarks. What they want you to do is reply to the message. In other words start a conversation.

The sender will claim that you should protect your domain name against misuse by purchasing a set of CN (Chinese) domain names to protect your uk one. It will not stop there, they will also recommend that you purchase other domain names including the text “homestart-czw” for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines etc. Before you know it you have purchased maybe 5 or more domain names that you do not need. Plus you have to renew them every year. The last one of these I looked at a few years ago would have amounted to an annual bill of £100 per year

Why should I ignore this?

Fundamentally because you are not trading worldwide, at best you are trading at the county level and most of you are at the local level covering a sub region in a county. Your domain name will generally give a clue about where you are: homestart-czw.org.uk is an Organisation (charity) based in the UK. You are not providing services in China or Asia, therefore no conflict exists.

However you have to admit; from a “plausible deniability” perspective, that the person making the enquiry could just claim he is trying to help you! Sadly there is nothing going on here which could be deemed to be illegal.

If you receive a message like this, send it over and I will check it for you.

The highlighted red ring around the web address is designed to fool spam checking tools which will probably be looking for that website address. That is why it has spaces and square brackets where there should not be any.

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Did Nominet contact you?

(Date March 23rd 2020)

I have recived several enquiries about messages from Nominet contacting domain name owners telling them that their domain name is about to expire, do they want to renew it?

This applies to anyone using a domain name ending in .uk. First point is if I am looking after your domain name, it will auto renew even if I have not raised an invoice for it yet. So continuity is always assured. The only exception to that is where you have told me that you are moving, or you are closing.

With regards to the messages from Nominet, if you read them carefully they are not actually for your domain name, but they are genuine messages from Nominet, here is what has happened:

myorganisation.org.uk vs myorganisations.uk

A year ago Nominet started issuing free domain names to anyone that held a .org.uk or .co.uk domain name. These were issued and added to your accounts without your (or my) permission by Nominet; the body which manages these things. I guess it was an initiative for making money, if we had used it, then people would have been coming to your site at the location, and now they would be asking you for money!

The domain name was the same as the start of your current domain name but just ended in .uk (so no .co.uk or org.uk).

I never used any of them, but had to go through my master account and set every one of them to auto expire, otherwise I would be charging you for two or more domain names.

Do I need it?

Short answer is no, you do not, and don’t feel you have to protect your brand by securing it. As things stand all domain names are well established in Google and Bing already. If some third party picks up your equivalent domain name but ending in .uk vs .org.uk or .co.uk and starts pretending to be you, then you can take legal action against them. I have never heard of it happening, but I guess you can never tell.

If you do want to secure it, let me know very quickly.

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Staying in control

The primary reason I help charitable and not for profit groups is because they have the least resources and are often limited on what they can achieve with their budgets through the normal IT channels such as web design and development. They are all largely dependent on external help either through volunteers or through contractors.

When I first enter into a relationship with a client, there are a few questions that get asked to establish how much control they have over their current website and IT systems. Often I find that they do not know the answers, or there is someone else that knows the answers. In one case some years ago the person that owned their domain name had passed away. So it was likely with no action taken their website and email systems would fail when the domain name was not renewed.

Tips on what you need to know

Make sure you know the answers to these questions, if you don’t and cannot find anyone that does, it represents a problem for you that may be part of a crisis later. So, make a note of them, and store them somewhere safe, and reference them from your IT policy.

1). Where is my domain name held?

Why?

The domain name is like the golden set of keys to everything. You should know where it is located, and have access to it. If for any reason you needed to leave a relationship with a developer or hosting organisation, it starts with moving the domain name out to somewhere else. You need to know the web address, the password and the email address/ user account. If you do not have access to the email account associated with the domain registration, change it to one you do have access to.

Continue reading Staying in control

Hosting Infrastructure

I have been through all accounts in the hosting and made some changes to the infrastructure that the websites run on. If you see anything broken, or any odd behaviour please bring it to my attention ASAP. These changes will impact your website and email handling (in certain cases).

PHP7.3

PHP is the scripting language which is used on the server to support the websites. It is a type of operating system for servers. The wordpress websites make requests to the operating system for various support functions. Up until yesterday (12/11/19) we had quite a large range of versions in use. I have upgraded all of them to above version 7.1 most are at version 7.3 the highest version available.

Why is this important?

I saw some reports coming from WordPress installation monitors that advised to update above version 7 because there were some security vulnerabilities in the PHP 7. That was the motivation to make the changes. Continue reading Hosting Infrastructure

Some checks to make

One of the things I try to provide is a one stop shop for email and for the website. While moving people over the past 6 weeks, it has become apparent that some people are still using 3rd party email systems. That is absolutely the right thing to do if you consciously set it up to work in that way. Particularly those of you that have moved to Outlook 365 which uses cloud based email.

Who sources your email?

However in a few cases I have found email is being used through a 3rd party provider, but nobody knows why. The issue here is you may be paying twice for hosting.

There is another case where people are using hotmail, yahoo or gmail accounts. Possibly because they did not realise they could use an email account with their domain name. Continue reading Some checks to make

TalkTalk Mail problems

(22nd November 2015)

There have been several instances of issues sending mail into the following domain names which I think all fall under the Talk Talk group of companies. I have seen another mail rejected message this morning to a talktalk.net recipient.

tiscali.co.uk
aol.com
talktalk.net

Each time I see these problems or someone reports a mail rejected message I get in contact with the sending hosting company and ask them to check. They report back that the issue lies with Talk Talk.

There seems to be some evidence that this group of domains have tightened up their security with regards to email. It has progressively got more and more complicated this year, most likely because of the high volumes of emails being sent by spammers. Various checks are being carried out to ensure that the server associated with a domain is really where the mail came from, and not from a 3rd party. Continue reading TalkTalk Mail problems

Who owns your domain name?

I am not trying to be alarmist here, be assured that despite reading this below; if I set up your domain name for your organisation then you own it. However problems can occur, so I have several examples I have given below to illustrate them, and what happened as a result.

The following article largely applies to .co.uk and .org.uk domain names. I have had direct experience in these cases, ICANN controls other domain names like .com. They will have similar processes in place.

It is possible to look up your domain name using a “whois” service. For .org.uk and .co.uk, these are managed by Nominet. You can go to this page, enter your domain name and see what is recorded about it.

http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois

I generally take out domain names for new clients using one of two accounts. The majority are held with my registrar uk2.net, and I am the registrant. Because I have an account with uk2.net my details are automatically entered against the domain names. However I can edit some of the fields on request.

Why is this important?

The person that holds your domain name, also controls where DNS is located, this is the service that connects a user looking for www.mysite.co.uk to the right web server. It also affects mail as well. So in the wrong hands, you can end up in trouble if you are not careful. Your mail could suddenly turn off along with your website.

Case 1: The registrant passes away

While replacing and moving an existing site I needed access to the domain name. Continue reading Who owns your domain name?