Beware of the “l”

In 2018, I received an outbound sales email purportedly from the owner of a great one word .com domain name beginning with the letter I. The email was signed by this person, and throughout the email, the first letter was written as I and i. Even the return address appeared to be from this domain name. The price looked too good to be true.

I went back through my email records and saw that I had tried to buy the domain name using an alternative email address. I made a low but decent opening offer and never received a reply to my email. I followed up a couple of times and never heard back. After receiving the outbound email, I followed up to confirm that it was the owner who sent the email.

A bit of diligence after showed me that someone was trying to pull a fast one. The domain name in the email address started with a lower case “L” instead of an I. The l looked like a capital I, and it was particularly easy to overlook when the content of the email had the correct spelling. A Whois search of the domain name used in the email showed the name had just been registered.

This morning, someone asked the following question on NamePros:

“Maybe someone here can explain this to me. LNVESTOR.xyz yesterday sold for 194 USD at SAV. Looks like investor.xyz but with a capital i when written out (ok I see the pro/value in that) but still I cannot see the 194 price tag value nor usecase for such a name.”

I assume this may have been an error on the part of the buyer. A quick glance at a domain name in auction can make it look like the lower case L is an upper case i. If an auction has bids and/or is closing soon, there might not be enough time to fully vet the domain name in auction.

When bidding on domain names or answering outbound emails, beware of the “l” or you might take the L.