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You are here: Home / spam / Domain Scam Targetting Irish Small Business

Domain Scam Targetting Irish Small Business

November 13, 2019 by Michele Neylon

There are always a few scams out there that are aimed at small businesses. Many of them are for “SEO” services where they promise “incredible” results. It’s a very good use of the word “incredible” as the claims are completely lacking in credibility.

In the domain name world there have been a variety of scams doing the rounds for years. Remember Domain Registry of America aka Domain Registry of Canada and other names? Or how about the “trademark protection” scams that have been going on for years?

Earlier this year we became aware of a new, European scam. While the sample emails we got were clearly targetting the Irish market there was an odd link to a Dutch entity. On further investigation it became clear that they’d tried the same nasty method in both the Netherlands and Belgium.

Back in January the crowd targetting Irish business were using the domain DNSIreland.org (I’m not going to give them a link!).

As of last week the same crowd are back targetting small businesses in Ireland.

Meet IDS Ireland (idsireland.org), who seem to have an almost identical website to DNSIreland.org

This time round, however, they’re calling themselves “IDS Ireland” and claiming that they were founded in 2009. Oddly the Irish companies office has no records of them. They also make a number of other claims that are at best “odd”:

IDS Ireland is a member of the Madrid Agreement, the Madrid Protocol and the European Community

That’s not how trademarks work.

A trademark application must be submitted to the Intellectual Property Office in Madrid.

The European trademark office is based in Spain, but not in Madrid, but Alicante.

The emails they’re sending out are almost identical to those sent by DNSIreland earlier in the year:

Dear Sir/Madam,

One of our customers has applied for the domain name .com. Since you are the owner of .ie, we would like to inform you about this registration request.

If our customer registers this name, this can have serious implications for your company. It may lead to confusion in Google search results because a third party is using the same name. In the worst case, this can even lead to image damage.
 
However, you have the option to register the domain name. As the holder of .ie, you have the first registration option with us. In this way, you will avoid any problems with another company operating under the same name.

Are you interested in this option? Here are all the conditions:

- The costs for this name are 19.95 euros per year. We will register this name for a 10-year period, which means that you pay a one-off fee of 199.50 euros (plus 23% VAT);

- You can cancel this name after one year, and the costs of the remaining years will be paid back into your bank account. After cancellation, we will refund you within 10 working days;

- We need your company name, address and VAT number to complete your registration. We will not accept the third applicant and will register the name for you.
 
This is a non-binding proposal. You are not required to take any action, yet we do recommend that you register this name. This may avoid problems in the near future.

If you have any questions, feel free to send your questions by e-mail. If you should like to have .com please send your company details for your invoice.

Kind regards,

Jake O’Brien
IDS Ireland
www.idsireland.org

There are so many issues with these emails it’s hard to know where to begin:

  • Registering a .ie doesn’t give you any rights in a .com and the emails to the holders of the .ie domains are unsolicited aka spam
  • the price for a one year registration of a .com is higher than normal
  • The 10 year “registration” isn’t a proper registration, as they’re offering a full refund after the 1st year.
  • No legit registrar operates this way
  • the “company” offering all this doesn’t appear to exist
  • the domains they’re using for this campaign were only registered a few days ago
  • they’re making statements about domains and trademarks that are simply untrue

Hopefully not too many small business owners will be duped by this rubbish.

If you want to register a domain name use a reputable company (yes I am biased!)!

Filed Under: spam Tagged With: ireland, irish, scam, Small business, spam

About Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade.
He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Stephen Holmes says

    November 14, 2019 at 10:17 am

    Maybe it’s a misspelling and should have been “uncredible” 🙂

  2. Michael Foley says

    November 15, 2019 at 1:39 pm

    This is a great post Michelle and I am going to share on all my Social Channels because not enough people know about this. I work for a number of SMEs and they are all being hit by this.

    • Michele Neylon says

      November 17, 2019 at 1:49 pm

      Thanks – it’s the kind of thing that makes my blood boil!

  3. Derek says

    November 18, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    Yes I just came across these scammers today when my wife asked if we needed a .eu domain name as well as .ie

    Alarm bells rang for me as I have seen this sort of rubbish before and I have promptly (anonymously) sent a message to them via their online page form (because they do not have a legitimate telephone number.. Having supposedly been registered in Ireland since 2009 lol ). They are in fact a dutch company, if you can even believe that..

    Being a Blacknight customer for over a decade now it also shocks and saddens me how these fictitious thieves can purport to be “real companies” so easily.

    • Michele Neylon says

      November 18, 2019 at 2:05 pm

      Derek
      Did she get one of their emails?
      We got more reports today of those emails going out.
      Michele

      • Derek says

        November 18, 2019 at 4:47 pm

        Yes Michelle she did. If she gets more I will contact Blacknight support.
        Thanks

      • Paul says

        November 18, 2019 at 5:20 pm

        Coming in thick a fast!

  4. Ashling says

    November 18, 2019 at 4:55 pm

    Hi there Michele. I got an almost exact same email today. I’ve a .com and they are trying to tell me someone is looking to register the same as a .eu only thing is I already have the .eu ! Eejits. Anyway, thank you for sharing, grateful to come across this piece, nice support and clarification.

  5. George Porter says

    November 19, 2019 at 10:15 am

    I got one of these yesterday from ‘Sean Smith’ offering a .eu domain name. I was immediately suspicious as I recall similar emails a few years back. There was a genuine company called IDS Ireland but it was dissolved in 1999.

  6. Beatrice Lasserre says

    November 19, 2019 at 10:20 am

    Hi. My business was targeted yesterday and I got an email about identical as the one you quoted. I got suspicious after reading it for the second time. I went to their website and there was no phone number. Then, I google it for a phone number and nothing came up.
    Many thanks for your article. Now, I know it is a spam and I am going to delete it.

  7. Michael Leahy says

    November 19, 2019 at 11:28 am

    I used to get the Chinese and Indian versions of these, “one of our clients wants to register [yourdomain].cn or .in. But we wanted to ensure that this does not infringe on your plans” (or words to that effect).

    • Michele Neylon says

      November 19, 2019 at 1:14 pm

      Michael

      Yes that particular type of scam was very “popular” at one point. We still see it from time to time, but it doesn’t seem to be as prevalent
      Michele

  8. Vincent Tully says

    November 21, 2019 at 4:52 pm

    I received an email yesterday , exactly the same as the one published above . I could smell a rat so I contacted Blacknight immediately and was informed to have nothing to do with them.

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