Domain renewals

Today I received a letter from what looked like a genuine domain name reseller/registrar … the Domain Renewal Group.

The letter is full of detail listing my name, address and one of my
website addresses, along with attractive prices for 1 year, 2 year
and 5 year renewals. There’s also a list of prices for optional domain
names, ending as .com and .net.

The letter is headed as “Domain Name Expiration Notice” and one
of the paragraphs reads as follows …

“You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on
the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your
current registrar to the Domain Renewal Group. Failure to renew your
domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online
identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you
on the Web.”

The rest of the letter is written in rather technical but very well
presented text, and on the reverse is masses of contractual stuff in
tiny print, which looks very genuine.

I spent several hours thinking about all this, and then looked very
closely at all the wording. And then a thought occurred to me … well,
how did these people get hold of my name, address and other details?**

Should I contact my existing web-hosting company (based in the US ),
and ask if DRG is genuine?

A quick search on Google for the DRG led me to several articles
entitled “Domain Renewal Scam” … here is a link to one of them …

http://www.domainscams.co.uk/domain-name-scammer_42_Domain-Renewal-Group.php

I thought some of you might own other website names, and so should
be aware of the controversy about DRG.

** it's the Whois register .... http://www.nominet.org.uk/other/whois/

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I've got to leave the house early tomorrow, to travel over to the other
side of Nottingham to do some child-minding - looking after Little A and
her brother J, while their mum goes to the doctor's surgery for some
physio.

Little A said to her mum: "I want to go with you tomorrow to the doctor's."
Mum replied: "Well, I'll show Granddad where the Jammy Dodgers are in the
cupboard, and you can have one while I'm at the doctor's." She was
very happy with that idea.

I think I'd rather have a Jammy Dodger than go to the doctor's.