One of our customers forwarded this email to me. –begin email Dear President&CEO, We are an organization specified at dealing with domain name dispute and registration in Asia. We have something important on intellectual property right need to confirm with your company. On August 7, 2010, we received an application formally, one company named “Tasora Holding Ltd” applied for the Brand keyword “acme company” and some domain names with our organization.

After checking, we found your company is the original trademark owner. If the company’s action haven’t been authorized by your company, so their behavior will conflict with your interests. In order to deal with the matter better, please contact us ASAP. In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit is 7 workdays. if your company files no reply within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Tasora Holding Ltd”. Best Regards, Mr. Yadayada (name has been changed to protect this person who probably doesn’t exist anyway.) –end quote Your first clue that it’s a scam? Read it. Although we all make typos and our emails are often riddled with grammatical errors, (I’m guilty as charged) any legitimate company could hire someone to at least do a cursory read-through before sending a message that makes no sense. Secondly, if you manage your own domain name(s), then you should have VERY NECESSARY information about each name(s) that you own. You should know - where they are registered and the web address of the registrar (like www.BeeLineDomains.com) - the user name and password to the log in to the website where they’re registered - when they were originally purchased - and most importantly, when they expire or come up for renewal If you don’t know this information, then you may have it stuffed into a file. If you don’t know which file it’s stuffed in, then go through your files right now and get all the info you need. Test the login to be sure it works. Check the expiration date to be sure it’s not expiring soon. If your domain name expires, your site goes offline! And, in many cases, your email goes with it. Yipes. Every day we become more dependent upon our email and website to conduct business. If you don’t manage your name, then you’ve probably opted to use BeeLine’s domain management services, which is smart. This means that you hit “forward” on any of these types of weird emails and forget about it, while letting us decide whether it’s real or not. The customer who received this scammy email has a couple of successful businesses where he works every day. He knows that during the time when he’s sitting at his desk messing around with domain name worries, he’s not being productive at his own business. So, he trusts us to manage website woes for him. BeeLine handles domain name issues for lots of companies, whether or not we build or host their sites. Are you on shaky ground when it comes to your company’s domain names? Just want to make sure your domain is healthy? Let us help you untangle domain name issues. 262.767.8887

~ Barb Emerson,  BeeLine Design – www.BeeLineDesign.com

Here’s a note to us from one of our BeeLine customers. She writes:

Hi, I received notification and an invoice from the Domain Registry of America for a reply to register my website. I don’t recall if this is something your company has done for my website or not. Please let me know how I should respond.

Thanks,
Mary

Grrrrrr. This makes me so mad. Domain Registry of America sends you an “invoice” indicating that your domain name is expiring. They ask you to pay immediately to keep your Web site available online. Wow. The nerve of some people.

Trouble is, Domain Registry of America has NOTHING TO DO with your domain name. If they snag you into paying the fake invoice, THEN, they have succeeded in taking control of your domain name. In essence, control of the domain name results in control of your Web site.

You’ve worked hard to promote your business through your Web site by including your Web address on all your printed materials, billboards, and other advertising. If someone nabs your domain name, you may need to start over with a new name. It would be like changing your phone number, which would require you to reprint business cards, brochures, re-letter your vehicle, etc. etc. What a pain.

If you’re a BeeLine customer, in most cases we manage your domain name for you. Or, if you’ve opted to manage it yourself, we’ve given you detailed instructions on how to keep your domain name safe. When we manage names (recommended), we always notify you a couple of months in advance of the expiration. This leaves plenty of time for renewal before there’s any danger of the name expiring. That notification always comes from BeeLine, not from any other company or registrar.

Registrar: the company where your domain name is registered. Registration is always done online. If you manage your own name, you should have a user name and password for accessing your account on that site.

If you ever receive notification from any company claiming to be “renewing” your domain name, be absolutely sure you’re dealing with a legitimate company and that they are really your domain registrar.

If you’re not a BeeLine customer or don’t know who is managing your domain name, give us a buzz. We’ll be glad to tell you the status of your domain name for free. And, if you need help managing your domain or site, we can do that, too. We’ve helped dozens of companies straighten out domain name and hosting problems.

OK. I just got off the phone with a woman who wanted to “update my information” for the White and Yellow Pages. I have nothing against phone books. They’ve come in quite handy over the years when I’ve needed anything from plumbers to pizza. (Well, I’ve never NEEDED pizza. But it does come in handy now and then, especially when facing a couple of dangerously starved teenagers.) And, phone books are actually still handy for some things. . . although I can’t think of any at the moment.

There are a couple of things wrong with this woman’s approach. First of all, she failed to mention that I would have to pay for my “updated” phone book listing. While she rattled off my address (which was wrong) and phone number, I interrupted to ask if there was a charge. Oh yes. Minor detail of $389. BUT, she continued , you’ll get a bold listing AND (here’s the Grrrr) a “premium listing on major search engines Google, Yahoo,  etc.” (This is a direct quote.) I think she was kind of annoyed when I told her it isn’t true that she can give me a premium listing. In fact, she hung up when I said it was totally absolutely and in all other ways inconceivable that she could give me or anyone else a “premium listing” on any search engine. There’s no such thing.

If it were possible to demand top billing for specific businesses, then they wouldn’t be search engines. They’d be advertising engines. And, the guy with the most money would get the Most Highly Profitable and Pretentious Premium listing. Take the Super Bowl. Who even watches the game anymore with so many clever commercials all stacked up waiting to pay their millions for few seconds’ rent on a bunch of pairs of eyeballs? Well, LOTS of pairs of eyeballs, I guess. (And, sometimes the half-time show has some interesting equipment failures, too.) Only the very, very rich can afford ads on the Super Bowl.

The fact is, it’s the quality of a Web site that determines placement on search pages. Searches are designed to return the most relevant information based on the words typed in by the searcher.  That’s it. If the text on the pages of your Web site is relevant to exactly what’s being sought, that page will be more successful in searches, because the text explains exactly what you do or sell and it matches the searched words.

So buy phone book ads if it helps customers find you and brings in revenue. But be sure to question anyone who guarantees higher (“premium”?) placement in Google or Yahoo! searches. That’s not how search engines work.

Here’s a note to us from one of our BeeLine customers. She writes:

Hi,

I received notification and an invoice from the Domain Registry of America for a reply to register my website. I don’t recall if this is something your company has done for my website or not. Please let me know how I should respond.

Thanks,

Mary

Grrrrrr. This makes me so mad. Domain Registry of America sends you an “invoice” indicating that your domain name is expiring. They ask you to pay immediately to avoid interruption in your Web site availability. Wow. The nerve of some people.

Trouble is, Domain Registry of America has NOTHING TO DO with your domain name. If they snag you into paying the fake invoice, THEN, they have succeeded in taking control of your domain name. In essence, control of the domain name results in control of your Web site.

You’ve worked hard to promote your business through your Web site by including your Web site address on all your printed materials, billboards, and other advertising. If someone nabs your domain name, you may need to start over with a new name. Just like changing your phone number, would require you to reprint business cards, print ads, re-letter your vehicle, etc. etc. What a pain.

If you’re a BeeLine customer, in most cases we manage your domain name for you. Or, if you’ve opted to manage it yourself, we’ve given you detailed instructions on how to keep your domain name safe. When we manage names (recommended), we always notify you a couple of months in advance of the expiration. This leaves plenty of time for renewal before there’s any danger of the name expiring. That notification always comes from BeeLine, not from any other company or registrar.

	Registrar: the company where your domain name is registered. Registration is always done online. You should have a user name and password for accessing your account on your registrar’s site.

And, if you ever receive notification from any company claiming to be “renewing” your domain name, be absolutely sure you’re dealing with a legitimate company and that they are really your domain registrar.

If you’re not a BeeLine customer or don’t know who is managing your domain name, give us a buzz. We’ll be glad to tell you the status of your domain name and help you manage it. We’ve helped dozens of companies straighten out domain name problems.