Monthly Archives: February 2008

Domain Name Renewal Scam

Posted on February 9, 2008 by John Kisha

I just wanted to alert you all to a scam that is currently making the rounds.

The scam works this way: unethical companies monitor the publicly accessible WHOIS database and obtain your contact information as well as your domain expiration dates. Using this information, they mail you an official looking document, months in advance of your renewal date, encouraging you to renew the name now to protect yourself from losing your domain name. When you renew the name by paying the invoice, the domain is not only renewed, but your domain is transfered to the unscrupulous Registrar. (I have personally received three of these solititations in the past three weeks for various domains I own or manage; and I can assure you the look very legitimate!)

There are a number of ways to combat this practice:

  • Enable WHOIS Privacy.
    This is the absolute best protection, stopping the scam dead in its tracks as there is no way for the scammer to contact you directly. (Contact us if you need help doing this.)
  • Lock your domain. A locked domain can't be transferred, again, preventing the scam from working. (Again, contact us if you need help with this.)
  • Remember, we (Inland Pacific Consulting or VisitUsAt.com) are you domain registrar reseller and will be the only one notifying you regarding anything with your domain names.

When in doubt, give us a call before acting on any suspiscious looking mail or email you receive about your domain names.
Thanks for your continued support of Inland Pacific Consulting (VisitUsAt.com)

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SPAM Attack

Posted on February 9, 2008 by John Kisha

Recently the amount of spam that we have experienced on our servers has sky-rocked to the point of slowing down delivery or legitimate email.

We have taken the following actions to curb the influx of spam and reduce the load on our spam filters:

1. Changed the SMTP port from 25 to 587. (Notifications were sent out with instructions for making this change to your email client.)

2. Added additional RBL (Real-time Black List) lists to check mail against.

3. Once mail has been blocked by the RBLs that we have implimented, we are then blocking those offending IP addresses at our server to reduce the load off of our spam filters.

This should help to return delivery back to normal as we fine tune and tweak the new settings. As with all technology, it is not perfect. If you experience any problem receiving email from a sender you know is legitimate, let us know and we will see if it is the result of any blocking we are doing, and then make the necessary adjustments to allow that sender's email to bypass our spam checking.

Additionally, it is a good practice to add all of the important email addresses to your white-list on our server. This will assure that those addresses bypass filtering and assure their delivery.

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