Beware Domain Renewal Group letter in the mail or HK-NSC email

Many NewSprout Hosting customers have brought to our attention letters they have received in the post. The letter is from Domain Renewals Group in the US, but claiming to be based in Melbourne.

The letter will be addressed to you, the registrant, with either your existing domain or a similar domain they will try and trick you into registering. They obtain your details from a Whois search on your domain, which is actually illegal, but difficult to prove. The physical letter, you receive via postal mail, starts with “As a courtesy to domain holders we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire…”

They try and trick you into believing 2 things:

1. That they are your domain provider, and

2. If you don’t register/renew your domain right away, you will lose it.

The Domain Renewal Group have actually tried to justify this behaviour, however the fact that they cannot do it for .au domains (because Australian law can then intervene) proves its lack of authenticity. You will only receive this for .com, .net, or other GTLDs.

The HK-NSC email scam

It reads as follows:

Dear CEO/Manager,

We are a domain name registration center in Hong Kong, mainly dealing with domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection. On <this date> we received a formal application from a local company of your country who is applying to register some domain names with the keyword “your-dcmain-name” and register it as their internet keyword. After investigation, we find that you are the original user of the keyword. As this refers to your company name or trade mark, and in order to avoid the confusion and dispute on the internet, we inform you and would like to know your ideas, if you agree about this issue, we will finish the third company’s registration, If you don’t agree the third company to register. please inform me. looking forward to your reply. thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

Kind Regards,

Sonia Adela

Tel: +852-31757931-8003
Fax: +852-31757932
Email: sonia.adela@hk-nsc.hk
website: http://www.hknsc.hk

Both scams are very similar.

Action: We, as well as many legitimate providers, have tried taking action, however there is not much that can be done.

You can just ignore the letter and email.

If in any doubt please contact us and we will be more than willing to assist you in clarifying your domain status.

NewSprout Hosting’s MD, Gavin Payne, has been Hosting servers, applications and websites for over 10 years, helping global companies including Telstra, Bidvest, VISA, AVIS, AT&T, Peugeot, BMW, Motorola and many others build their online presence. NewSprout is an Australian company offering website hosting, email services and domain name registrations to business and personal clients. For more information visit https://www.newsprout.com.au/web-hosting