If you have a website, then you have a domain name, like "yourspa.com". To own a domain, you have to renew it annually (some choose to renew for several years at a time). But, there are a lot of scams out there you need to be careful of when it comes to the renewal of your domain.

Things to watch out for:

• Anything sent via the old fashioned post office. Scammers often send letters in the mail. A legit company communicates it's renewal notifications via email. Make sure your domain company has a good email address on file for you.
• The letter asks for a check or money order — real domain companies prefer to work with credit cards.
• The letter will be friendly but use rather scary language. They might imply that if you don't pay up now, your site will go down and you might loose the domain name for good.
• Someone calls you out of the blue, claiming that you're about to lose your domain name. Real domain companies don't make renewal phone calls.

These companies, like Liberty Domains of America and Domain Registry of America, prey upon ignorance and fear. If you ever have doubts or questions about the legitimacy of a letter, call or email regarding your domain, you can look up for yourself where your domain is registered and when it expires with a Whois lookup. Don't include the "www." part, just "yourspa.com".

In there, you will find the registrar, which is your domain company and the only one to whom you should pay for renewals, unless you're specifically choosing to change registrars. You'll also find your expiration date, so you can verify that it really is coming up.

2 Responses to “That bill in the mail for your domain name renewal? Chances are it's a scam.”

1. Tom Winegar Says:
   February 26th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

   Great reminder to check to see when your domain name needs to be renewed and we did get hit by this scam. Caught it prior to the check being sent. Thanks for the hints, they are always welcomed.

2. Tammi Says:
   August 10th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

   Yep, I fell for this crud, DANGIT!!! Liberty. Now what can I do? Nothing and write it off as a lesson?

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