Just Throw It Away

Believe it or not, this is one of the most common questions we receive in the web-hosting area of our business. The answer to the question is: Just throw it away.

Everybody is used to receiving spam in email, and junk mail from the post office. This is spam from the post office. I actually received this in today’s mail, but I receive these multiple times per year, despite having complained directly to the sender. Let’s look a little closer at the return address:

You would think that the U.S. Government itself had sent this to you!

Inside the envelope you will find what looks very much like an invoice. If you read closely, however, you will see that it is just an offer to transfer the domain name registration for a domain that isn’t going to expire for several months. I received this particular one because I am the Administrative Contact for the domain in question. The problem is, the Registrant (who is a client of mine) will also receive one of these “invoices.” Either one of us might happily pay this invoice, but if we did we would be initiating the process of giving the “Domain Registry of America” at least $30. In return, they would initiate a Transfer of Registrar from wherever the domain is currently registered (Verisign, GoDaddy, Register.com, or wherever) to the “Domain Registry of America.” For various reasons which I won’t take the time to explain here, that transfer is never likely to succeed. Nor are you likely to ever see that $30 again.

In a day or two I will receive an inquiry from my customer asking, “Do I need to pay this?” The short answer is “No.” The long answer is “Just throw it away.” That’s all you need to know about this one.