I recently received an email from a company interested in buying a domain that I own, offering 50% to 65% of the current appraisal value. I suppose that’s good, I don’t really know though — I don’t buy or sell domains, myself. On the other hand, even 65% of $0 seems kind of low since I don’t currently use any domains. I -USED- to, like four years ago, but that domain is expired and long gone.

So that was the first tip-off that this was a scam, and after doing a bit of research I found that this entire situation is nothing but one big scam aimed at anyone who owns a domain and is even slightly interested in knowing it’s value; so if that even remotely describes you, listen up!

Spoiler Alert! “Domain Trade, LLC.” is a PHANTOM company!
However, “Domain Trade, INC.” DOES exist, and is in fact a Japanese company that was involved in a lawsuit over reverse domain hijacking (among other things), but is, to the best of my knowledge, not affiliated with this scam.

The Scam

There are a number of posts over on DomainNameWire.com, DotWeekly.com, and many others that talk about this particular variety of scam and I will list them all later, but for now I’ll summarize:

It’s apparently an old and very popular (read: effective) scam used against domain name owners. Essentially, the owner is approached (through e-mail) by someone claiming to be interested in purchasing their domain name; but not without validation of the domain’s market worth. So they’ll require an appraisal of the domain name before naming their bid; and they’ll even be so kind as to provide exactly what appraisal sites they’re willing to accept.

This is the scam part: only one, maybe two of the sites they list are legitimate. The others are either owned by the scammer, or they are a paid affiliate; and rest assured, their sites will be the cheapest.

The scam e-mail might sound a little something like this: (it’s most recent incarnation)

In the past these e-mails have been signed with titles, personal names, company names, and sometimes a mixture of two or all three of them; which can be variations, the exact names listed here are simply examples of past letters.

Now, I was going to leave the titles, names, and companies out as I thought the specifics were not entirely necessary, but I found the sheer number staggering, so just to help give you a clue as to how big this scam really is, check this out!

I will mention, however, that the person said to be responsible for this scam owns a number of other sites, including toughguy.net and phreaker.net, which both redirect to a site called hotpop.net, which is an e-mail service that provides e-mail aliases (among other things). E-mail aliases allow you to mask your e-mail address and send messages to people that look like they come from someone else — a common scammer tool. Softhome.net is another site that this individual owns, and is a similar service to hotpop.net.

That aside, older versions of the letter might link to a forum where the buyer has asked some “experts” for advice; unfortunately I can’t find an active version of the site linked with these. To my knowledge, however, the sites were poorly disguised. First of all, he’ll try to make his URL look like another, more popular URL by using a subdomain such as “namepros.007sites.com” because many people know namepros and think that is the site they’re going to, when in actuality they are going to 007sites.com.

So when dealing with this approach, here are a few notes to keep in mind:

Legitimate forums will usually have…

• A register/login form somewhere on every page.
• The option to reply to posts.
• Date/time stamps on every post.
• Links to other threads within the same site.
• Links to members’ profiles.
• Some sort of home page for the forum

Legitimate forums will usually NOT have…

• Static HTML pages for the forum threads. *

* This is a big one. Usually URLS for forum threads will contain a bunch of data that the server uses to retrieve posts from the database; these strings usually start with a question mark (?) and contain a few variables (usually strings of numbers) separated by ampersands (&).

In the newer incarnations, however, the buyer includes a list of sites that s/he will accept appraisals from. So of course, here is a list of sites that have been included in these scam letters; take note and watch out:

Protect Yourself

Now, as I said, this scam makes it’s money through the appraisals that the owner pays for. I don’t know if the appraisals are bunk or not, but the MO seems to be that the owner will pay for an appraisal, send the results to the scammer, only to never receive a reply. See, they don’t really care about buying your domain, they just need you to pay for the appraisal and they have your money.

So here’s the deal, domains are like real estate, and just like real estate it is the BUYERS responsibility to research the value of the property they are interested in. If someone wants to buy your domain it is up to THEM to get an appraisal. In the end, appraisals are simply suggestions, they are not concrete. The final price comes down to negotiations between the buyer and seller and if the seller wants a few thousand more than what some expensive appraisal site says it’s worth, then that is their right as the owner of that domain.

But if someone demands that you, the seller, goes out and pays for an appraisal, just walk away. Any serious buyers will already have appraised your site before they contact you.

It should also be noted that payments through PayPal have the potential to be a bit iffy for things like this because you can’t dispute the payment for a “service”; even if the service offers a “money-back guarantee” after such amount of time, usually the time will be just long enough that even if you -could have- disputed it, it would be too late.

That not good enough? Try this: check out the “from” column of the e-mail. First, if the name is just the writer’s name with a couple of numbers behind it (like jeffmiller44), it’s probably not legit. But if you’re not convinced with that, take a look at the domain name. The letter I got was from “domain.trd@gmail.com”; the domain name here is gmail.com — this is NOT GOOD. A legitimate domain buyer is going to have their own domain and their own e-mail address. I’m not saying everyone with a free e-mail service is a scammer, but it makes them look seriously questionable.

Additionally, if they DO have a legitimate-looking domain name, throw it into your address bar. If it actually pulls up a site, that’s a plus; it doesn’t mean they are the real deal, it just makes them look better. If there is no site, however, or if the site looks like a 6th grader made it in Microsoft Word, then chances are they are not really interested in your domain name.

Still unsure? Okay, take that domain name and run it through Google. Oh, and add “domain name scam” after it. If this company has in fact scammed anyone on the internet, you can bet someone, somewhere, is bitching about it. Read some news articles, some blogs, or brows a forum or two; see what other people are saying about this company.

So there is it, seller beware; and if anyone out there happens to see another incarnation of this scam with different names, or (more importantly) different appraisal links, go ahead and leave a comment letting me know so I can add them to this post and keep everyone informed.

But don’t take MY word for it…

1. “Anatomy of a Domain Name Appraisal Scam” Andrew Allemann. Jun 13th, 2005. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2005/06/13/anatomy-of-a-domain-name-appraisal-scam/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
2. “Domain appraisal scam is reborn” Andrew Allemann. Mar 23rd, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/03/23/domain-appraisal-scam-is-reborn/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
3. “Domain Appraisal Scam Migrates to TrpicalNames.Com” Andrew Allemann. Apr 13th, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/04/13/domain-appraisal-scam-migrates-to-tropicalnamescom/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
4. “Domain Name Appraisal Scam Now at NameOrange.Com” Andrew Allemann. May 15th, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/05/15/domain-name-appraisal-scam-now-at-nameorangecom/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
5. “The incredible mutating domain appraisal scam” Andrew Allemann. Jun 3rd, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/06/03/the-incredible-mutating-domain-appraisal-scam/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
6. “Fleos.com is open for fleecing” Andrew Allemann. Jul 29th, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/07/29/fleos-com-is-open-for-fleecing/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
7. “PDDomains.com latest scam appraisal site” Andrew Allemann. Aug 10th, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/08/10/pddomains-com-latest-scam-appraisal-site/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
8. “Domain name scam moves domains again” Andrew Allemann. Sep 2nd, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/09/02/domain-name-scam-moves-domains-again/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
9. “Domain name appraisal scam update” Andrew Allemann. Sep 11th, 2009. DomainNameWire.com http://domainnamewire.com/2009/09/11/domain-name-appraisal-scam-update/ Accessed Fri, Sep 11th, 2009
10. “Bogus Domain Name Appraisal, just another spam?” EM. Sep 9th, 2009. KING.NET Web Buzz http://www.king.net/2009/09/bogus-domain-name-appraisal-just.html Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
11. “Domain Name Appraisal Scam” isolani. Apr 14th, 2007. isolani.co.uk http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/spam/DomainNameAppraisalScam Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
12. “Domain Name Appraisal Scam” bluecrab. Aug 2nd, 2005. Web Hosting Talk http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=430411 Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
13. “Domain Appraisal Scam Targets Domain Name Owners” Lenny Zeltser. Mar 24th, 2007. Internet Storm Center http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=2504 Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
14. “Domain Name Appraisal Scam” Marcel Feenstra. Jul 30th, 2009. Locker Gnome http://www.lockergnome.com/dutch/2009/07/30/domain-name-appraisal-scam/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
15. “Domain Name Appraisal Scam” Jim Lesses. GoArticles.com http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1499787 Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
16. “Domain Name Appraisal Scams” Jun 3rd, 2009. 1nova.com http://www.1nova.com/blog/?p=519 Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
17. “Macez.com Another Domain Appraisal Scam” Jamie Zoch. Sep 1st, 2009. Dot Weekly http://www.dotweekly.com/2009/09/01/macez-com-domain-appraisal-scam/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
18. “Another Domain Appraisal Scam ~ Kevin Hill” Jamie Zoch. Jul 29th, 2009. Dot Weekly http://www.dotweekly.com/2009/07/29/domain-appraisal-scam-kevin-hill/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
19. “Domain Appraisal Email Scam Again” Jamie Zoch. Mar 10th, 2009. Dot Weekly http://www.dotweekly.com/2009/03/10/domain-appraisal-email-scam-again/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
20. “Another new appraisal scam email going around” Jamie Zoch. Jan 9, 2009. Dot Weekly http://www.dotweekly.com/2009/01/09/another-new-appraisal-scam-email-going-around/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
21. “Domain Name Appraisal Scams” Jamie Zoch. Dec 29th, 2008. Dot Weekly http://www.dotweekly.com/2008/12/29/domain-name-appraisal-scams/ Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009
22. “**** APPRAISAL SCAM ****” IDN auction. http://www.idnauction.com/appraisal-scam.html Accessed Sat, Sep 12th, 2009