One of my Home-Start clients received a message today from an apparent UK based company informing them that their client wished to take out a domain name that could conflict with theirs. To keep that group anonymous let’s assume the entity was “Home-Start Prestwood”, and their domain name is “home-startprestwood.org.uk“.
They were offered the opportunity to reserve: http://home-startprestwood.net for £199.95 for 10 years. The message is positioned that the company making the offer is doing them a favour and helping to protect their brand because they know a 3rd party that wishes to take out a competing domain name. It is a con, don’t fall for it.
A new version of an old con
A couple of years ago someone kept popping up based in Hong Kong doing the same thing. But they were assuming that they could protect your brand internationally by taking out a number of Asian based domain names all starting with home-startprestwood.com.xx where xx was a country in Asia. Their offer was £155 per year for around 10 domain names. This one was easy to see through because you do not have or need a market presence in Asia.
The company in question is dnsuk.org. If you are approached by this company, specifically James Wilson of DNSUK ignore the message. They have a very nice website here: http://www.dnsuk.org and claim to be based in London offering Trademark Registration and Domain Name Registration. While they are open from 8am to 8pm, they apparently do not have a telephone, which can often be a give away.
Here is a copy of their pitch. I have replaced the Home-Start name with Prestwood to assure anonymity.
Dear Sir/Madam,
We have received a request for the registration of the website www.home-startprestwood.net Our system shows that you are the owner of www.home-startprestwood.org.uk. This can have far-reaching consequences for you in the future. We are therefore under the obligation to contact you, in order to offer you the first right of registration. This means that we will reject the application of the third party and the website:
After agreement we will link this website to:
www.home-startprestwood.org.uk
This means that you will have the first option on the domain name, in order to avoid possible future problems.
We are usually under the obligation to register the domain name and to protect it for a period of 10 years. The annual price for the .NET extension is £19.95 per year. This means a one-off payment of £199.50. When the link has been completed, all the Internet traffic that goes to the .NET extension, will be automatically linked to your current extension and website. This process will take a maximum of 24 hours. This domain name will then have a worldwide reach. The third party will be rejected and can no longer use your domain name.
Important information:
– You will receive a one-off invoice of £199.50, exclusive of VAT, for a term of 10 years.
– This contract can be cancelled at all times after the first term of one year. The paid amount for the remaining number of years will be refunded to your account.
If you agree to our offer, please send an agreement by email within 48 hours after receipt of this email, stating your name, address and VAT number in a reply to this e-mail address.
The third party will subsequently be rejected by us, and we will then complete the link. You will receive a confirmation and all the information you need by email on the same day.
With kind regards,
(home-startprestwood has been substituted in this case)
James Wilson
Are they legitimate?
They claim their organisation has existed since 2009, however the domain name they are using dnsuk.org was only registered in 14th of February 2019.
If you ever need to take out a domain name, you can take it out per year, and because you hold it you have automatic rights to renew it. So there is no need to take it out for 10yrs. Where I host you, and I have control of your domain name, I automatically renew it for you, 1 yr at a time. No business or organisation can assume it will still be trading in 10 yrs time.
If you pay £199 to this organisation and they pay for the domain registration for 10yrs they cannot offer you your money back, because they have spent a lot of it. They claim however they will send you your money back. In which case they never used it to pay for the 10yrs, they are paying a year at a time. Which you could have also done.
The registrant in this case is actually based in the Netherlands:
nederlandsdomeinregister.nl. However if you check that domain name it does not go anywhere and does not appear to exist.
Is this illegal
I don’t think it is illegal, they are offering to sell you something, you are not obliged to buy it, and like most con’s there is a small amount of truth in there. Some people or organisations do hold several variants of domain names, even I have in the past, but I don’t take them out for 10 yrs, and in my case I have taken out the most important ones for me.
If there is a weakness to the sales pitch in this case, when I looked the domain name was still available (so they had not taken it out unilaterally for their client), and I doubt their client really exists.
For most of you though you are charitable organisations with a unique footprint for your area and service. Nobody would be competing with you locally. It is the risk someone might do that is what these people are playing too.
Bottom line
If anyone contacts you about “protecting your domain name” and there is a price to pay, send it to me and I will check it out. Chances are it is a scam being operated by someone.
I would not be at all surprised if this organisation disappeared within 12 months of their domain name registration. Because what they are doing is not illegal, and they are legitimately selling domain names, then there is little you could do to stop them. However if they manage to get 500 people to pay them £200 each they have netted £100,000. One might also have thought that if they can register domain names, then they are a registrar in their own right. However they took out their own domain name with GoDaddy in the USA. So maybe not a big fish after all.