Make Sure Your Email Address is Accurate

Almost every morning, I receive a Registrant Alert email from DomainTools informing me of newly archived domain names (in their database) that are registered to my domain name and those names that were transferred out or expired. I don’t remember when I signed up for the alerts, but they’re helpful to my business.

A couple of months ago, I started seeing random domain names that were registered to my email address but definitely were not owned by me. At first, I thought it was an accident and an anomaly, but over the past couple of months, I’ve received a whole bunch of notices for domain names I don’t own but are registered to my email address.

After seeing a few of these come through, I did some research and noticed there is very generic registrant information (ie no business or personal name). Additionally, I confirmed that the domain names are registered to my email address, so technically I could request the password and likely the EPP authorization code for the domain names to transfer or change the DNS (not legal).

To make things worse, these aren’t just domain names… Almost every one is a developed website, and they all appear to be physical businesses. Ordinarily, I would reach out to the website owner via the contact form on the site, but the sites are all in Russian. My guess is that they were all developed by the same company (or hosted by the same company) and the host or developer changed his registrant information to mine in error.

This is just a reminder to 1) always keep your Whois information accurate and 2) always manage your own domain names.

Obviously I am not going to do anything nefarious with these domain names, but the owners likely won’t receive their expiration notices.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

2 COMMENTS

  1. Hello Elliot,

    I notice that you are watching domainers backs with some of your posts! It might be good to also cover e-mail spoofing which I have experienced. People pretending to be you!

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Squadhelp Adds Escrow.com as a Payment Option

1
Squadhelp has added Escrow.com as a payment option for buyers. The addition of the Escrow.com option was shared by ARIYAS on X this morning: 👍...

Some Thoughts on .AI Domain Names

19
There is no question that .AI domain names have become a hot topic of late. With considerable amounts of venture funding flowing into AI...

Handoff to Dan on Imported Leads Can be Confusing

0
I've been using the lead import option at Dan.com more regularly. Although the 5% commission is not ideal, transactions tend to move more quickly...

ArtificialIntelligence.com Goes Up for Sale

11
I tried to buy the ArtificialIntelligence.com domain name multiple times over the last 10 years. The emails I sent to the registrant went unanswered,...

EU Gives More IP Protection to Food & Drink Producers

0
Did you know that some well-known food and drink varieties are protected intellectual property regulations? Popular types of drinks and foods that are protected...