Catching the domain spam…
July 21, 2008
I host a domain for a friend at work, trusoldiers.net. I think I’ve been hosting it for nearly 3 years now. I recently got an interesting email regarding trusoldiers.com, so asked him about it…
He’d said that he used to own it 5 years ago, but the person that hosted it forgot to register it again, and lost control… This lead to him buying the .net version. Then comes the new email…
The email was rather suspicious to me… below is the content, no names changed to protect the innocent, because in this case, I don’t believe they deserve it, after all… well, it’ll become clear..
Subject: Do you want trusoldiers.com?
From: warren.davis@dcinchq.com
Date: Sun, July 20, 2008 17:07
To: jon@netdork.net
Priority: Normal
Mailer: php
We purchase expired domains in bulk and recently acquired one that I think you might be interested in. The domain is trusoldiers.com and since you own trusoldiers.net we thought you might also want the more popular .COM version.
All of our domains are priced at a one time fee of $49.95. This includes full transfer of ownership to you and the first year of registration. After the first year is up you can renew for about $10 annually or move it to the registrar of your choice.
If you are interested go to:
http://www.dcinchq.com/index.php?domain=trusoldiers.com
If not, just hit delete. This is a one time note for the owner of trusoldiers.net.
All the best,
Warren Davis
Digital Caucus, Inc.
Now, the message clearly says “we purchase expired domain names in bulk”… That’d imply that it is expired, they purchased it, so it is no longer expired… right? Wrong… A simple test at internic.net will tell you the truth. At the time, it reported it was unregistered. That means I can use the registrar of my choice to register… This means that I don’t have to pay the extortionate $50 they were asking for… Why? Because even some of the largest registrars are only charging $10-30 a year…. Mine, eNom, only charges $9.95 a year.
The fun thing is the small print on the bottom of their website…
All domains are registered through Moniker. They can be transferred to another registrar after 60 days. Moniker charges $10.49 per year for a .COM registration. Your first year is included in the $49.95 purchase price. We will point your domain to the website of your choice at no cost or you can manage the domain yourself. We are a registered and accredited PayPal Business account holder.
They clearly say that the domain registration only costs $10.49 for a year, and can be transferred after (which will cost more)… So that leaves a tasty $39.50 profit… Not a bad little deal.
Posted in General Ramblings
I'm a full time network administrator, working for a large company in the automotive industry. I enjoy spending time with my family, when I get away from work that is. I also enjoy photography, and computer programming.
content rss
July 21st, 2008 at 21:29
!Cough! RIP OFF !Cough!
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:17
So, did you go an register it yourselves from under the nose of these monkeys?
July 25th, 2008 at 10:34
Yes, yes I did
Owned now by Fatal, via me 
August 15th, 2008 at 16:52
But then again, I would pay $40 bucks to have someone notice that a domain I want was released. Actually they did just that for me. But, after getting this strange email, I looked it up on eNom and found the domain was available and bought it myself.
If they had just sent me an email saying that I COULD register with them OR donate money to them for noticing the domain was available I actually would have sent them $10-$20 as a thank you.
Either way, it’s an interesting model, AND a bit misleading.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:00
Abelard,
I’ve seen several domain registrars offer “watch” services that will notify you when the domain becomes available, or even the ability to offer bids on them (eNom provides a dandy link if you try searching for domains already registered).
An interesting service model there… Offer a service to watch domains, and automatically grab them when they become available