Email apparently from registrar

[MAllie]

I may still be a newbie, but but I'm not raw enough to send

Domain Services
47-47 36th Street #16452
Long Island City, NY 11101
United States of America

anything between $75 and $295 to renew a domain name I have with Register.com, as requested in the email I received from them this morning (similar to others I've received before).

I'm sure that most of you are familiar with this type of email. The words are very carefully designed to make it seem as if they are your registrar, but when you read them over you see they are merely claiming to have come upon your listing through the search engine and asking you to send them money.

This money is presumably not even to be used for renewing your domains, but is to be looked on by this company as a gift from someone foolish enough to make it.

But I'm wondering what would be the position for a newbie who might actually feel pressured to pay money to this company? Is there not an element of fraud in the application, no matter how carefully the words are couched? If the intention is fraudulent, is a fraud not then enacted? I would be interested to know what legal minds think about this.

I apologise if this topic has arisen before I joined in 2008 but, if so, perhaps it needs another airing anyway.

[Mike Cruz]

I have received a email from them before, but I get TONS of mail from them. There is also another that is named "America's Domain Registrar" and "U.S. Domains"...

They offer renewals starting from $40 up to $300 / year, lol...

[MAllie]

You would think that this kind of thing would be wasted effort, except that I read that if they only get .1% of people paying they make a fortune, because there are so many millions of people on the net.

This is such a cunning kind of spam that I hate to think of anyone falling for it, but I'm sure they must or they wouldn't bother.

[Mike Cruz]

They are not trying to target us, they are trying to target the people who know really nothing about domains other than the fact that they own one for their online store, or their business, etc.

If the domain is important to them and they have no knowledge of how this all works, they will pay it to "secure" their domain.

[INVIGOR]

read carefully... Most of them say "This is not an invoice"

[Mike Cruz]

read carefully... Most of them say "This is not an invoice"

That comment makes their attempts 'legal', but we all know what they are trying to do