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08/04/2007 00:00
Received a bill in the mail regarding your domains?
If you have a website, then you have a domain name, like "thedesignshoppe.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 "thedesignshoppe.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. If we are your domain registrar, then rest assured your domains are safe and you will receive email notices at 25 and 10 days prior to expiration. We have double security on your domains -- all domains are locked and each domain needs an authorization code to transfer out. Without both of those, nothing can be done to take your domain from you.
Of course, if you have any questions, please submit a help ticket and we're more than happy to answer your questions regarding your domains.
