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Registrar Told To Stop Direct-Mail Scare-Tactics 151

Posted by timothy from the shame-on-you dept.
kiwimate writes "This article says the Domain Registry of Europe has been ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority to cease and desist on a direct mail campaign that was "distressing and intimdating to recipients" and "misleadingly exaggerated the importance and status of its content". The letter suggested that domain names should be renewed at least 30 days before they expired, and gave recipients an easy option of renewing through the DR of E. Having had to deal with this from an almost identically named company in America, the quoted phrases don't seem nearly as sneaky and dirty as some I've seen, but it's good to see a precedent."
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Registrar Told To Stop Direct-Mail Scare-Tactics More

Registrar Told To Stop Direct-Mail Scare-Tactics

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  • Good (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:39PM (#4523536)
    I'm so sick of waking up with a severed horse's head in my bed every time I fail to re-register my domain.

  • I get these all the time... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ellisDtrails ( 583304 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:40PM (#4523540) Homepage
    especially funny are the ones where they claim that "if you don't register .tv, you'll lose your opportunity forever." like I care.
    I'm glad they are doing something about this. If you want general direct mail stopped, or at least slowed down, check out this site. [dmaconsumers.org]

  • Do what I do... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VisorGuy ( 548245 ) <ina c t i ve> on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:43PM (#4523564) Journal

    Cross out your address and write on the envelope:

    Return to sender

    I usually also write one the back something like:

    We do not accept mail from fraudulant or misleading sources.

    I'm not sure if I'm accomplishing anything, but it makes me feel better. It might even cost them a couple cents!

    • Re:Do what I do... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:45PM (#4523585)
      If you really want them to stop sending you mail, then write "return to sender - recipient deceased" across the front.
    • Don't forget to attach a brick to the envelope before you send it back.
      • That doesn't work anymore:

        http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_356.html [straightdope.com]

      • True story this.

        In the UK we used to have a "Poll Tax" which was deemed unfair by right-thinking individuals, and all sorts of methods of civil disobedience were used.

        When they finally tracked me down, after years of evasion I decided to teach them a lesson.

        I went into my local office where you could pay by cheque and I paid ... by microwave.

        That's right- I got a broken microwave oven- a really old heavy model, and I wrote out a cheque to those bastards on the top with a permanent marker.

        At first they refused to accept it, saying that the bank would not handle it. I said "Ring them up". So they did. Yes, the bank would handle it, no there would not be any additional charge.

        Haha!

        Well it made me feel better at the time anyway, even though the queue of people waiting to pay didn't break out into spontaneous applause like they would have done had it been a quirky English comedy set in the gritty North of England.

        graspee

    • Re:Do what I do... (Score:5, Informative)

      by nahdude812 ( 88157 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:50PM (#4523637) Homepage
      As learned in the AOL CD story a few days ago (so don't blame me if it's inaccurate, /me points at everyone else), anything that comes bulk mail doesn't have any return to sender fees associated with it, so the post office throws it out if you send it return to sender. Meaning that all you do then is increase the load on the postal service, with out inconveniencing the sender at all, and subsequently increasing postal rates.
      • As learned in the AOL CD story a few days ago (so don't blame me if it's inaccurate, /me points at everyone else), anything that comes bulk mail doesn't have any return to sender fees associated with it, so the post office throws it out if you send it return to sender. Meaning that all you do then is increase the load on the postal service, with out inconveniencing the sender at all, and subsequently increasing postal rates.

        Maybe if SPAM, I mean, junkmail, becomes a big enough hassle for the post office they'll stop marketing bulk mail these clowns and make them pay for a full-priced stamp like the rest of us. Even if that stamp cost me 50 cents, I'd be happier with than than the mailbox full of other people's (the advertisers) trash I have to throw away each night.
        • Well, the reason you first class mail only costs $0.37 per piece is those clowns. The USPS makes a lot of money from that class of mail.
          • If the USPS is so efficient compared to the rest of the world, why can Australia deliver mail for about US$.24 over a about the same area? They even put it in a letter box at the house, not in a shared box 2 blocks away like in 99% of new places in the US. the USPS rates are some of the highest in the world (even though they have a poster saying they aren't).
            • "Take Germany, for example. A first-class letter to anywhere in that country, or to much of Europe, costs about 50 cents - almost as expensive as Switzerland, but still markedly below Japan, where it costs almost 70 cents."

              ""If your carrier delivers two pieces of mail to your house or five or seven pieces, there's a huge difference in delivery costs based on per capita volumes," says Bob Cohen, director of research and analysis at the Postal Rate Commission in Washington.

              In other words, each piece of mail costs more to deliver in, say, Germany, because the average German receives one-third of the mail of the average American.

              But on the other hand, the US Postal Service has to pay the cost of delivering mail to both far-flung rural dwellers and the relatively low-density suburbs favored by many Americans.

              In France, where it costs more than 40 cents to send a letter within the country or to most of Europe, it's not the price that riles. What really bothers consumers is a sense of the deterioration of "la Poste" - and this in a country where mail service used to be described as impeccable.

              "Recently, the mail has turned completely unreliable," says Hélène de Maredsous, a Parisian mother of four. "It's happening more and more that a letter I know was sent to me never arrives or shows up a month or two later," she says. "Then, when you go to the post office, you wait in line for a half hour, only to be treated poorly. Service should be better for the money.""

              From
              http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0401/p03s01-usec.h tml

              http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0401/csmimg/0 401p3b.jpg
              • So your saying America has more "far-flung rural dwellers and the relatively low-density suburbs" than Australia? Or maybe your saying the local mail is unrelaiable? Or maybe slow? If so, the assumptions are wrong on 3 counts. For AU$.45 i get next day delivery in major cities and three day delivery most everyplace else. For less than us$.90 I can send a letter anywhere in the world. On average most Aussies get less mail that Americans and about 1/2 have lables on their mail boxes that cut out the 3rd class junk mail so the local post office can't count on that offsetting any costs. The rates they show (from the USPS before the rise to .37) are now wrong and its cheaper to send a letter in France than in the US. The French letter will also goto a different country for the less than the US charges to deliver to the other side of town. So you fell for the USPS's FUD marketerring, you'll get over it.
      • Right, increasing sender rates for unsolicited bulk mail. hmm, doesn't sound so bad after all.
      • 1. The post office will, in turn, be forced to raise the fees for bulk rate mail which, in turn, hurts the senders of it.

        2. Don't write return to sender on the envelope. Instead, pull out the "No postage necessary" business reply mail envelope, and mail it back. Better, chop up those catalogs Lands End keeps sending you, and stuff those in the envelopes first. Their special discount rates only apply to the first ounce, so if you stuff it up they pay significantly more.
      • As learned in the AOL CD story a few days ago (so don't blame me if it's inaccurate, /me points at everyone else), anything that comes bulk mail doesn't have any return to sender fees associated with it, so the post office throws it out if you send it return to sender. Meaning that all you do then is increase the load on the postal service, with out inconveniencing the sender at all, and subsequently increasing postal rates.

        True. If, however, the postal junk mailer included a Business Reply envelope or postcard, you can always use it to express your displeasure at being put on their junk mail list.... No cost to you, extra revenue for the Post Office, and they pay to hear that you don't like to be bombarded with the stuff. ;>

        In general, I do this only for companies that I never bought from and that bombard me with LOTS of junk mail. Since a company pays to send junk mail, I don't find unsolicited postal mail offensive in itself. I save my real ire for junk faxes [junkfaxes.org] and spam [abuse.net] .

    • Re:Do what I do... (Score:5, Funny)

      by essiescreet ( 553257 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:02PM (#4523769)
      Save your postage-paid envelopes that come with credit card offerings and bogus credit card offers. Then, take them to work and mail them back with the spam faxes inside. This way, they have to pay for the postage to recive crap, and you use up those spam faxes! It's a win-win situation.
    • Actually, since Return to Sender is a task that only the U.S.P.S. can give itself, the proper response is to write Refused on the front by the address, sign and date it. Then, if it is first class mail, or return service is guaranteed, the postmaster will stamp it Return to Sender and ship it back.

      IANAPM, but I think that's how its supposed to work...

      And, yes, you can probably get away with signing it "Grand Poobah."
    • I usually mail them a small but heavy metal object in the postage paid envelope, to hopefully increase the postage they have to pay. Don't know if it works.

  • Thanks, spamassassin! (Score:5, Informative)

    by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:45PM (#4523584) Journal
    Yeah, it might sound unrelated, but because registers that use scare tactics like these, often use layouts that Spamassassin automgaically filters away.

    So, although I might get these from time to time, I'll probably never see them. Thanks to spamassasin. My current registrar however, goes through spamassasin just fine and reaches my inbox unscathed. How convenient :)

    • I'm a happy user of spam assassin also! I never knew how easy it is to get rid of unwanted mail. I pay this man, well, actually I leave a small paper bag of small denomination, unmarked bills behind my trash barrel, and I never see any spam again. Sure, every day around 3pm the paramedics arrive out by the mail boxes and pull a man out of some truck with a blue eagle on it (Just between you and me, I think he's stalking me). The the police come and ask me some questions. They are very nice folks you know. Anyways, back to spam assassin. Its really a top notch product. I never see any spam at all now. Infact, I don't think I've recieved mail since I hired spam assassin, which also means NO BILLS! Which is nice, cause what I pay for spam assassin is crazy, but it sure is worth it knowing I don't get any junk mail anymore. Sure, spam assassin sounds like a dangerous product, but it really has made my life so much wonderful!

      • ROFL, thanks.. Although you dragged my comment waaaay out of context, you managed to make me squirt coffee on my keyboard through my nose.

        Aaah, that sure clears out my cynuses (sp?), the content of them now lies on (and in) my keyboard. Thanks for turning my workspace into a brownisg-greenish gooey mess.

    • These came in snail-mail though, can I hire a "spamassassin" to sift it before it reaches my postal box?
      • Uhm, no, I don't have a hitguy called mario, who snipes from across the street. :)

        But, I did get (electronic) mail about registering domain names, and some even used the "scare tactics" the article mentions.

        Because these guys (the people that send _electronic_ mail) use spammy layout, my (electronic!) spamassassin takes care of them.

  • double-standard? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davejenkins ( 99111 ) <slashdot&davejenkins,com> on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:47PM (#4523609) Homepage
    sorry for bringing this up but...

    Does it not strike anyone else that this community freaks out everytime some gov't or other official entity even *hints* at limiting someone's GPL half-baked scheme, yet the same community practically screams for blood when one of those half-baked schemes involves spam?

    I hate social engineering-- except for those policies against the people I don't like...

    • Re:double-standard? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by broken_bones ( 307900 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:12PM (#4523852)
      You have a point. I think everyone, to some extent, has double standards. It is unfortunate that we often let our world views cloud our judgement instead of trying to view all sides of an issue.

      That being said I take issue with your comparrison. I think that there is a huge difference between governments limiting/restricting/not being happy with use of something like the GPL and spam. Using the GPL for your own code is a choice. If it doesn't make sense for company X to use the GPL they shouldn't. If their stuff is good enough (or their maketing department is swift enough) they will sell allot of it. If their stuff sucks (and they have a bad marketing department) they will go out of business. Because this is the case the use of the GPL will be governed in a broad sense by people making marginal decisions. If the benefits of using the GPL outweigh the costs it will be used, if the costs are to high it won't be. The one exception to this is government software. The use of the GPL in government software/government contracts is a policy issue. Open discussion and passionate debate about policy is always a good thing.

      Spam differs from the GPL in that one doesn't get to choose spam. It just comes to you. Spam is something that the consumer (ie the guy receiving spam) really doesn't have a say in. Much of this is because the economics of spam don't have much of a concept of scale. Manufacturing 10,000 spam messages or 1,000,000 spam messages has a much different price tradeoff than manufacturing 10,000 cars vs. 1,000,000 cars. In this sense spam and the GPL fall into two very different catergories.

      I think the best way to sum this up is by using an analogy. The GPL (whether in a half baked sceme or not) and other licenses are like cars. There are some good cars and some bad cars. Yet government doesn't tell you which car to buy even though they may have a preference (ie domestic v. foreign).* Spam is like pollution. I don't know of anyone who enjoys breathing smoggy air. Like spam, pollution isn't a problem each of us can solve on our own. Sure we can purchase masks (spam filters) but that doesn't get rid of the underlying unpleasantry. This is a case where limited, focussed government intervention would probably be a good thing.

      The preceding comments are not meant to support any specific government policy or action. They are merely my off the cuff ramblings on a public policy debate I am probably not qualified to participate in. You gotta love free speach...

      *Just to counter the "but cars are regulated. Thing of safety and pollution" arguement I'd like to point out that there are legal restrictions on liscenses in the form of applicable contract law. (ie you can't have a liscense that forces someone to do something illegal.)
      • Again, another bad analogy. Producing one million spam messages is much easier than producing one million cars; I get your point, but AT LEAST be realistic. Say something like: 'Producing one million spam messages is like writing a program that does just that; easy' Then at least I'd have more respect for your statement.
        • The intent was not to compare the ease of producing 1,000,000 spam messages to the cost of 1,000,000 cars. The point was to illustrate that there is little cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 spam messages as opposed to the large cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 cars. Producing a car is expensive and so you only want to produce cars that will be sold. Spam is cheap and so you don't care that 99.99999% of the messages you send out have no return. There was never any intent to compare the effort required to produce comparable numbers of spam messages or cars. I was trying to demonstrate the extremely low variable cost for spam production.

          Hopefully this clarifies my original intent a bit.

    • How is this not a troll? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It doesn't make sense.

      this community freaks out everytime some gov't or other official entity even *hints* at limiting someone's GPL half-baked scheme

      What on earth does that mean?

      Seriously? What does it refer to? What "half-baked scheme"?

      When the fuck has anyone on slashdot ever supported unethical business practices or deceptive advertising?

      What do unethical business practices and deceptive advertising have to do with the GPL? At all?

      I hate social engineering-- except for those policies against the people I don't like...

      Are you referring to the fact that sometimes slashdot seems to have a hacker-friendly tone? OK, sure. I'll agree there are people here who will support illegal or deceptive actions by small groups or individuals to harm large corporations or governments, but will scream bloody murder when large corporations or governments act illegally or try to decieve small groups or individuals. That isn't everyone, though. And it still doesn't have anything the fuck to do with the GPL, free software, or what you said.

      The slashdot community is sometimes hypocritical, and usually idiotic. However, you have to realize it is a community. As in, more than one person. If you see different viewpoints being expressed at different times, sometimes it's becuase different people are expressing the different viewpoints.

      And if you are just going to engage in going "hey! you're all hypocrites!" and then high-fiving your buddies without making any productive or coherent points about anything, you're no less useless and no less a sheep than the worst slashbot here. If you have something worthwhile to say, and you think you can make half an ounce of sense, do so. If all you can do is construct broad generalizations to put down other people while not contributing anything to the discussion yourself, then shut the fuck up.

    • Re:double-standard? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Welcome to slashdot. You must be new here.

    • People have big double standards. Consider copyright.

      Kazaa etc aren't themselves copyright infringers, but they can be used for this purpose very easily, and are actually used for this on a massive scale. However, when government/producers try to do something about this, either by technology (DRM) or by legislation, we cry bloody murder.

      Now consider our attitude when some company is in a slightly grey zone over article x.y of the GPL. Off with their heads!

      If Microsoft were to release a bit of software that by itself isn't infringing, but makes it trivial to hide GPL code in your binaries, so that companies could steal GPL code without anyone finding out, and if this software was immediately used on a massive scale for exactly this - I think some people here would suggest that MS should be sued, to say the least :)

  • The Reg?! (Score:2, Funny)

    by tag ( 22464 )
    Oh, I misread the headline. I thought it was about The Register [theregister.co.uk].

    Well, now that I think about it, it would a BOFHish [theregister.co.uk] thing to do.

  • Weird (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:49PM (#4523619)
    Having had to deal with this from an almost identically named company in America, the quoted phrases don't seem nearly as sneaky and dirty as some I've seen...
    Literally, ten minutes ago, I got a letter from Verisign, telling me about changes I didn't make to a domain I don't have.

    Spooky.
    • "Literally, ten minutes ago, I got a letter from Verisign, telling me about changes I didn't make to a domain I don't have."

      That's the problem with being Anonymous. Maybe you should use a registerred nick so they can send you unsolicted mail for the domain you do have!

      :)

      BTW, I did an experiment and having your email address without the Spam filtering will result in tons of SPAM.

  • A "precedent"? Say what? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe it's a precedent in Europe, but if you're in America, that's worth about as much as a precedent on Mars.

    That's a good thing; imagine if judges could whack you with "precedents" established by Slobodan Milosevic, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, et al...

    Oh, wait. They do want to do that. It's called the ICC. Heh heh.

    • "Maybe it's a precedent in Europe, but if you're in America, that's worth about as much as a precedent on Mars.

      Europe doesn't have a precedent. It has prime ministers and kings and things.

      And I know Mars doesn't have a precedent. Those canals don't mean people live there. duh

  • I've seen this before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:50PM (#4523643)
    My customers get this all the time.. the sleazeballs who send them out make them look like invoices, in the hopes that their victims will think it's legit.

    ICANN (or whoever gives authorizes registrars) should take punitive action against fraudsters like this..

  • As a followup to the freedom of press story... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rui del-Negro ( 531098 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:52PM (#4523658) Homepage
    Having had to deal with this from an almost identically named company in America, the quoted phrases don't seem nearly as sneaky and dirty as some I've seen

    So you're saying the USA has the sneakiest registries? Why can't you americans accept that some people can be just as sneaky and dirty as you??

    I think it's time someone made a "worldwide registry sneakiness index"!

    RMN
    ~~~

  • 30 days is bad? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by toupsie ( 88295 )
    I just got a letter from Network Solutions saying that I need to re-up my domain because it will expire in 6 months! Hurry or I might miss out!

  • I got one (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dylan2000 ( 592069 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:57PM (#4523720) Homepage
    I got one of these a couple of months ago. It really does look like a bill and it's only after reading the smaller print at the bottom (or having at least a basic idea of who you're registered with, and why) that you would know it's just a trick.

    I have it on my desk somewhere but I can't find it under my huge piles of crap -- um, I mean important work-related documents -- but it's really an interesting scam. As far as I remember it doesn't say the word 'switch' or 'change' anywhere, just 'renew with us', or whatever it is, which is totally misleading. The thing is they just have to set their bots to scan a couple of domain databases and auto-print however many thousand of these things per day and then they can just sit back and collect the payments. They only need 1-2% response and they're rich, almost without lifting a finger.

    If it wasn't such a low and dirty trick, preying on the ignorant like it does, I'd have to be impressed and we did laugh when we got it in the mail but it is disgusting and I'm glad something is being done about it.

  • They should simply have said... (Score:5, Funny)

    by u-235-sentinel ( 594077 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @12:57PM (#4523721) Homepage Journal
    All your domains are belong to us!
    • you people need to read the mad-lib more closely!

      all your ______ are belong to ______!

      1. thing (singular)
      2. person/group of people


    • Someone set up us the renewal....

      (Renew now for great justice!)

    • I wanted to get the .com of the .org I had a while ago. I had the .org because the .com was taken when we registered it, but then when I looked it up last year the people who'd had it had given it up and now it was owned by domaincollection.com, who claimed it was a "Premium domain name" and wanted $1900 for it. Give me a break. "Premium"? Exacly how many people are just waiting to get their hands on kyrn.com that badly? The name doesn't even mean anything, so go figure.

  • "distressing and intimdating to recipients" (Score:4, Funny)

    by CySurflex ( 564206 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:01PM (#4523756)
    First of all, WHO are these people are getting distressed and intimidated by spam? They need some help.

    Further....especially when it comes to real junk-mail in your postal mail box - the trend I've noticed is that the less important it is the more important they make the envelope look.

    "Joe Smith, this is your ONE IN A FUCKING LIFE TIME OPPORTUNITY TO ______________"

    (get a secured visa gold, get dept consolidation, get pet food for cheap, get a new life insurance policy for your parrot, contact your long lost relative, help me transfer funds out of nigeria)

  • Yeah but 1/2 the worlds domain are owned by idiots (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:05PM (#4523793) Homepage Journal
    Seriously....

    Slash sometimes looks over the fact that it only represents %10 of the internets user base at the most. The other %90 of the web is owned by places like chucks kitchen remodeling or mary's giftbaskets, where their webspace is nothing more than an online business card they created with page creator.

    Although Registrars.com mail is annoying, I just make a killfile and it automagically disapears from my inbox. I know when I registered my domains and when I have to renew them. Yet for every 1 guy like me there are 10 guys that isn't.

    Now sure, it may seem like registrar is using predatory tactics with headlines like.

    "YOU MAY LOSE YOUR DOMAIN IF YOU DONT ACT NOW"

    But have you ever tried to get a non computer person to get motivated and do something on a computer related task? Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate is what they will do. I can just imagine the volume of calls that registrar.com must have recieved from angry domain holders when they lost their domain to some cybersquatter. Not just calls, but lawsuits too no doubt.

    Obviously it's a lot easier to send out these menacing e-mails than it is to staff a call center to deal with the angry phone calls and complaints. My hats off to them for such a great idea! I think i'm going to send a mail to my exchange users now...

    CLEAN OUT YOUR MESSAGES FROM YOUR OUTLOOK PST OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR COMPUTER!!

    *clicks send*
    • You may lose your karma if you don't act NOW.
      • How would you call that a troll? I simply pointed out that the beuty of this method *IS* more cost effectivive than to.

        A. Hire people to call and remind people it's time to renew.
        B. Hire lawers to handle the cases of "They didn't notify us!"

        The C. part, which wouldn't really go with the flow of the above 2 points would be computer geeks (like you and me) stay on top of things like renewing our domain registrations because it is part of the entire passion of what we do.

        Take my uncle for example, he's a ford mechanic. He's kept the same 87 mercury cougar running for years, while the one I got in the better condition than his was then isn't in a drivable state at the moment. He takes as much pride in pulling into the garage at home, and putting his car up on jacks at night as I do fsck'ng my hard drive and recompiling my kernel. It's passion for the art that makes us do what we do.

        So anyways, no i'm not trolling, just pointing out how our passions dictate our interest in what we do.
    • I always thought that when it comes time for passwords to expire that rather than the standard "Your password is going to expire, would you like to change it now?" type message it should say

      CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD NOW OR YOUR MONITOR WILL BLOW UP AND KILL YOU. WE WILL THEN RAPE THE BODY WITH A BASEBALL BAT AND TAKE YOUR CAR KEYS.

      oe something along those lines. :)

  • Same crap in Canada. (Score:2, Informative)

    by mrobinso ( 456353 )

    In addition to the Versign scams, we have these idiots [newswire.ca] to deal with.

    This of course has nothing to do with the ineptitude of these idiots [www.cira.ca].

    The solution to dealing with these creeps naturally is to do business with a reputable, knowledgeable outfit [easydns.com], and the idiots seem to be kept at bay.

    .mike

    • I'll second the easyDNS recommendation - great customer service and a phenomenal online admin interface.
    • Wow, it's nice to see that someone is looking out for the Canadians against the big, bad, horrible Americans. Maybe someday they'll appreciate the US as a constructive neighbor; oops, shit, sorry....then again, maybe not. Good luck with the future without American expertise.

  • domain insurance? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spoonyfork ( 23307 ) <spoonyfork&gmail,com> on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:11PM (#4523842) Journal

    I had a customer tell me not too long ago that someone called him and tried to sell him insurance for his domain name to protect it from being registered by someone else right before and/or after it expires. The customer told the spammer to go scratch.

    I highly doubt it but I have to ask.. is this a legit practice?

    • Why not? Start a service that tracks expiration dates and emails clients starting, say, 60 days in advance. Is it pointless for much of the Slashdot crowd? Sure, but there are probably a lot of people who would find it at least marginally useful.
    • I had a customer tell me not too long ago that someone called him and tried to sell him insurance for his domain name to protect it from being registered by someone else right before and/or after it expires. The customer told the spammer to go scratch. I highly doubt it but I have to ask.. is this a legit practice?
      Well, insurance has to be based on a certain type of Risk. Speculative risk is not insurable, Pure risk is insurable. ("Pure Risk is uncertainty as to whether some unpredictable event that can result in loss will occur [entre-ed.org].") Failing to reregister is a bad business decision, and is totally predictable, not a randomly occuring event, and thus it is speculative risk. He's insuring your tendency to forget... but he can't insure something he can't control or 100% replace. If your house is insured, and it burns down, the insurance company pays for its repair or replacement.

      If you lose your domain name because you forget to reregister it, then what is the "domain name insurance" company going to do about it? Take someone to court? Maybe take you to court for negligence? He can't sell domain name insurance; He could however set up a domain name reminder service, or reregister your domain names on your behalf on a regular basis.

      He couldn't even insure you against the potential for business loss should you forget to reregister and lose your valuable name to someone else, because that would be Speculative risk.

      Yes I work for an insurance company.

      • "Well, insurance has to be based on a certain type of Risk. Speculative risk is not insurable, Pure risk is insurable."

        "Failing to reregister is a bad business decision, and is totally predictable, not a randomly occuring event, and thus it is speculative risk.

        I work for a large marketing company. We have insurance against making a mistake on printing jobs over a certain size. Example : a severe typographical error is made on a $250,000 print run and not noticed until the run is finished. We can claim the costs of that entire print run from the insurers - of course we pay a hefty premium.

        What is fully comprehensive car insurance, if not indemnifying you against your driving negligence?
        • ...a severe typographical error is made on a $250,000 print run and not noticed until the run is finished. We can claim the costs of that entire print run from the insurers - of course we pay a hefty premium.

          A typographical error is a random enough mistake that it can be ensured. However, if it could be proven that your company intentionally included the typo, or you tried to make several design changes on the insurance financed run, it'd be fraud.

          You can insure against disasters, such as car ACCIDENTS or ACCIDENTAL costly errors such as your typo example, but not against bad business decisions. Typos are unpredictable, especially since you probably spend a lot of time proofreading before a big run. Your insurance company probably made sure you had a good enough proofreading team and good enough track record that it was not too great a risk to insure you.

          But insuring the predictable mistake of forgetting to reregister your domain name (it happens exactly once every X months) is not reasonable or even meaningful. By not reregistering, you are effectively donating it to the DNS company and letting them put it up for sale (details are probably in the agreement you signed with your registrar). That's not an unexpected loss, it's a poor business decision. Not having a better agreement with your registrar to automatically renew your domain name is also a bad business decision. Any insurance company would take it as you having made a choice not to re-register the name.

          If you still believe you can insure a domain name, please define exactly what is being insured, and how much it is worth, and how, when the time comes, you will prove you did not fraudulantly fail to re-register your domain name in order to collect your policy (kind of like burning down your own house).

          ...What is fully comprehensive car insurance, if not indemnifying you against your driving negligence?

          If you take your car, aim it at a brick wall, and floor it, your insurance company will not pay. If you park it near a cliff, put it in neutral with out the parking brake on, and let it roll off the cliff, they won't pay. It's not against "your driving negligence", it's against the random possibility that you'll crash, or be crashed into. 'Underwriting' loosely means risk assesment, where an underwriter considers an insurance applicant's relevant details, such as whether they have a history of unsafe driving (speeding tickets, many crashes, DUI's), and will decide how much of a risk you are, and therefor how much you have to pay them to insure you.

  • godaddy.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by Penguinoflight ( 517245 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:13PM (#4523854) Journal
    My registrar for just over a year, very nice, very cheap ($8.95/year).. they even parked it for 2 weeks and let me know the credit card on file was bad.
    • My registrar (ha! as if I'd own them) is OK, not that cheap but not the worst of the flock. Things work well, so I'm not going to change to save a few dollars a year.

      However, when they couldn't charge my cc (apparently had old cc info), I got no notification. Then, later, DNS just stopped working. Still no info about something being wrong. I tried checking things on their domain management site, but nothing - all was green, all my settings as I wanted them.

      It took me only two days to get the issue resolved, which I think is pretty good. However, I don't know if they have started working on the problem that I was never notified of failure in charge to my cc. Hopefully next time the renewal comes up I remember to check my cc info for correctness..

  • Deja-vu all over again (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greedo ( 304385 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @01:14PM (#4523875) Homepage Journal
    Having had to deal with this from an almost identically named company in America, the quoted phrases don't seem nearly as sneaky and dirty as some I've seen, but it's good to see a precedent.

    DRoEurope is run by the same folks who brought you DRoAmerica [droa.com] and DRoCanada [www.droc.ca] ... these guys [domainregistrycorp.com], who seem to be affiliated with Enom somehow (and who can't build a proper pending page, it seems).

    DRoC was earlier slapped for sending mail [ic.gc.ca] using a logo remarkably similar to the Canadian governments logo.

    Obviously these guys have no scruples. On the plus side, you can probably safely ignore anything you receive from the Domain Registry of Africa, Domain Registry of Asia and the Domain Registry of Oceania.
    • Yeah, DRoA has hit us a couple of times. Their mailings are misleading in a number of ways:

      First, they make it sound like they are already your current registrar, even if you aren't.

      Second, the BS about how if you don't renew your domain 60 days it may be lost. They use this as a justification to send out the mailings a good 6 months before the domain is up for renewal

      We had an extremely important domain name that was registered a long long time ago in the name of one our founding executives. They received the mail at home and simply wrote a check... I'm still trying to convince DRoA that we don't really want to switch to them and that I'll never approve the constant change requests they send.

  • Sample Letter (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dear Sir/Madam/Fido,

    Your domain name is in danger of being eaten alive by giant carnivorous roaches. To prevent this from happening, send us oodles of money every week for the rest of your natural existence.
  • The people who would fall for that kind of scam are the same ones that spread that spread a virus all over the world. Not to put all of the blame on them, but maybe the small inconvience of opening some spam will teach them a lesson that will benefit us all.

  • These guys are complete bastards. (The forms are exactly the same as the Domain Registry Of America.)

    Because of them I had a client call me BEFORE 9AM! in a panic about their domain.

    Even I had to look closely at their letter before I realised exactly what they do, probably because it was early in the morning. ;-)

  • What popped into my head when I read the headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @02:47PM (#4524564) Journal
    Registrar Told To Stop Direct-Mail Scare-Tactics

    Letter: Dear domain name owner: BOO!

    Owner: EEP! *thud*

  • Domain Registry of America (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ipxodi ( 156633 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @02:50PM (#4524583) Homepage
    Domain Registry of America does the same thing. They actually bagged my wife with their scam. She was being a sweetie by trying to keep my domain from being lost and paid the "bill". I had to look at the thing twice myself to make sure it was fake -- it does look "official."
    Of course, I was suspicious because my domain wasn't due to expire for 6 months and wasn't registered with them in the first place. Took me months to get my money back.
    DRoA are A**holes.
    The registrars need to allow you to put a "lock" on your domain names the same way the phone compnaies allow you to lock your service, so you don't get "slammed".
    • I don't know about other registrars, but GoDaddy allow you to lock your domain to prevent transfers and ownership-details changes. You have to log-in to their web admin stuff and turn the lock off prior to making any account changes. Technically pretty simple, but gives me warm fuzzies all the same.
      • "I don't know about other registrars, but GoDaddy allow you to lock your domain to prevent transfers and ownership-details changes. You have to log-in to their web admin stuff and turn the lock off prior to making any account changes. Technically pretty simple, but gives me warm fuzzies all the same."

        You can do a similar thing with DirectNIC [directnic.com], who has been managing my domain names for almost a year now. (They are great, btw, with lots of extra free features, and a non clueness person answered my e-mail to them at 10PM on New Year's Eve. And please don't ask me what I was doing administering domain names on New Year's Eve. :-)

        Basically, fraudulent transfers where the registrar says you authorised and you didn't really authorise it automatically go through if you don't actively repsond to a confirmation e-mail. With DirectNIC, you can turn on "secure mode" where the transfers are automatically denied unless you reply to the confirmation e-mail.

  • This same company is operating bogus domain registries in all continents.

    They are the same fuckers who are behind at least the Domain Registry of Canada and Domain Registry of Australia, which pulled the same stuff in those areas of the world.

    They get sued in one geographical area and they just move to the next. Scum.

    Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers.

  • Not only spam, but also perhaps fraud? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Thursday October 24, 2002 @03:34PM (#4524886) Journal
    At my previous employer, we got one of these letters while I was out-of-office. Unfortunately, they didn't read into it and signed up with (our local version) the Domain Registry of Canada (DROC).

    When I found out, I placed a nice little call to the DROC, wherein my employer talked to them and supposedly had the switch halted.

    The good thing: The domain never got switched off. It hadn't expired yet, so we re-registered with our original registrar and stayed on with them.

    The bad thing, the fraud thing: DROC was supposed to refund the charge to our company VISA, as they had already processed payment. They didn't. We called them and found out that "no request for refund had been entered in their system." They never actually took over our domain registry (thank god) so no service was ever in fact rendered by them to the comapny. I don't know if the refund ever came back (going to email my old employer now and ask), but this seems quite underhanded and suspicious to me.
    • With my dealings wtih two of these kinds of jokers shows that they get overloaded. They tend to be a small operation run out of shared offices and they send out lots of mail and then they get lots of responses and then they manualy transfer domains until one of the big registration companies finds out about a surge in transfers and starts asking questions and halts the operation.
  • I received a number of letters from the DROE quite a few months ago, and I realised almost straight away what they were doing.
    As most of their mailings probably targeted people and businesses who had little or no domain knowledge, I thought it my duty to get these crooks reprimanded.

    It was me and a fellow Brit from DNForum.com who reported these people to the ASA.

  • This practice seems to have a lot in common with the "scare tactics" of the average dead-tree magazine, e.g. "Subscribe now or you may miss the next 3 issues!" 1 year before your subscription runs out.

    Is the main difference here merely that the average domain name subscriber is less informed/knowledgeable about the nature of their subscription?

  • Thought that said The Register [theregister.co.uk] was resorting to direct-mail scare tactics.

    "Misleadingly exaggerating the importance and status of its content"? Hmm... sounds like a category both /. and El Reg fit nicely into.

  • That's right -- the first and biggest domain registrar in the world has done exactly the same thing [slashdot.org] -- they have also sent "renewal" notices to the administrative contact addresses of domains registered with different registrars. They've had to settle with at least a couple of other registrars whose customers they tried to steal.

    It would be nice if someone would crack down on them this way.

  • Internet Support Group (Score:2, Informative)

    by spartan ( 30665 )
    That's nuthin. I got a fax from a company called the "Internet Support Group" with all kinds of legalese. They essentially fax over a list of alternative TLDs for domain names that I own, trying to scare me into purchasing these alternative TLD versions of my domain name "in order to protect it" from someone registering one of the other versions in the future and exerting a claim against my .com name.

    If someone did not know better, they'd jump to fork over their money "just in case". Of course, someone cannot trademark property where a prior ownership of that property has already been established. This is plain scaremongering using IP arguments to close a sale. A totally bogus and reprehensible communique.

    http://www.internetsupportgroup.com [internetsupportgroup.com] is the domain name of these scumbags. Oooh- really scary! Take my money, please!

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