Tag: domain names

July 18, 2019

Domain Name Theft

Your Internet domain name e.g. mybusiness.co.uk can be very valuable and a key part of your business. Without it, online customers won’t be able to find your website or may be redirected without their knowledge to a copycat site.

You may think it’s impossible for someone to take your domain name but it does happen and the scammers are clever in how they do it, leaving you with the difficult task of proving you are the rightful owner.

For a hacker to take your domain name, there are two basic methods:-

They change your DNS configuration, to redirect traffic from your site to their site
They modify your registration contact information, which gives them full control over your domain

A hacker can also change the registration data in the WHOIS database. This then makes it difficult for you to prove that you are the rightful owner. If they have control, then the hacker may also move the domain registration to another registrar which makes it more difficult to get your domain name back.

Q. How Can Hackers Access Your Domain Account?

The most common method is through a phishing attack. They send you emails that look to be from some official body, such as the domain registrar and get you to click a link to their fake website page and use your login and password thus giving them your login credentials.

Alternatively they get your login credentials from a data breach or simply buy the information from another hacker who has employed phishing attacks etc.

Protecting Your Domain

Prevention is the key, rather than planning what to do in the event of such a problem.

Ensure a strong password and that only you know the password for domain control, guard against phishing attacks and anything out of the ordinary regarding your domain. The most effective control is domain locking.

Domain Locking

You can ‘lock’ your domain, which means that changes will not be allowed unless you ‘unlock’ the domain. Your domain registrar will do this for you and it’s normally a free service.

Domain locking also stops unauthorised transfer of your domain name to another registrar.

Keep your domain name safe.

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June 24, 2019

The Domain Name Offer Scam

Big brands can be sensitive over any other business having a very similar website to them or one of the same name with a different extension.

E,g the Tesco supermarket website is at www.tesco.com but they also own tesco.co.uk, tesco.biz, tesco.uk and more.

The main reason for this is to avoid fraudsters trying to catch out people attempting to get to the genuine Tesco website.

Smaller companies are likely not so bothered about other people having similar domain names, but everyone wants to avoid fraudsters conning their customers of course.

Dnsuk.org send out vast numbers of emails to businesses, with a detailed story about how someone has asked them to register yourdomainname.net (I.e. whatever your domain name is) but that they have to give you first option on that domain name.

This is lies.

They want payment of £199.50 plus VAT to protect the domain name for 10 years by redirecting any traffic to that domain to yours instead.

If you actually wanted to buy yourdomainname.net it would cost much less than the amount dnsuk.org charge and there is no reason to pick 10 years.

Dnsuk.org may intend to disappear in a short time after gathering as much money as possible – that way the 10 year figure makes sense for them.

Do not be conned – if you want extra domain names then buy them through your hosting provider and certainly ignore such lying emails from dnsuk.,org

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

April 10, 2019

Wrong Domain Names

Before explaining about wrong domain names, we’d better clarify what’s meant by ‘correct’ domain names.

Appropriate or matching might be a better description than ‘correct’ but you can choose your own descriptive word.

The internet domain name chosen by a business or organisation or individual should match whatever they are selling or publishing or what they are.

That’s simple to understand.

Suppose you know there is a UK company called Flowersby, you can search using a search engine to find their website or could guess e.g. www.flowersby.co.uk or www.flowersby.uk or flowersby.uk.com maybe.

If Flowersby is an international company then I might try www.flowersby.com

Business, organisations and individuals normally pick domain names that make it easy for them to be found.

If I’m a UK company then I should choose a domain name ending in .co.uk or .uk or .uk.com

If I’m a local cricket club then I might pick e.g. “.cricket” or “.club”.

If I’m a non profit organisation then I would probably pick a domain suffix “.org”

Make it obvious to people what you are.

The Fightback Ninja has the domain name fightback.ninja for obvious reasons and because people associate qualities such as stealth, silent and deadly, expert etc. with the word Ninja.

Is there any harm in people picking unexpected or unusual domain names or domain name suffixes?

NO.

You have a wide range to choose from and often it’s the need to standout that leads to the choice of domain name.

So, what is a ‘wrong’ domain name?

Many domain names have restrictions on who can buy them. This is to ensure integrity and to stop unscrupulous people buying up domain names they think other people will want then forcing them to pay over the odds for the name. e.g. .ac.uk is only for UK academic institutions.

“Wrong” domain names are where scammers pick up whatever domain names they can get cheaply, using an automated system and without any restrictions on who can buy them.

e.g. “.bid” was very popular with scammers as it is cheap and available to all. “.icu” is a new domain name that is becoming very popular with scammers for the same reasons.

Say you get a message about some piece of farm equipment but it’s from an email address ending in diabetescure.icu then you should be suspicious as it looks like a scammer has changed from selling diabetes scams to selling farm scams.

Likewise someone offering a price comparison but the email address ends in .xyz

If the domain name doesn’t match the apparent company name or subject of the message then be suspicious.

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