Scam Email?

Aswerty

Not sure if this is the right place to put this but...

I registered a new domain for the purpose of starting a technical blog. Anyways its the first domain I've owned or had to personally manage.

I received this email 2 days after purchasing the domain. I'm just verifying it is completely bogus.

Here it is:

Hi there FirstName LastName,

Domain Name: DomainName.com (Account #XXXXX)
This email is being sent out to you because search registration for DomainName.com is pending.
Please register these domains to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo ASAP to avoid late fees.

Registering for search engines would help you show up in search results and increase your online presence.

You can register your domain at: here

We sincerely appreciate your business! If you require anything, we are at your service.

Remember… If you do not register your domain with the search engines, it may not appear in the search engine listing when people are looking for you. Failure to complete your domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may make it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web. Complete your search engine registration today at: www.searchregistry.org


Sincerely,

Search Engine Registry
1787 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 1025
Washington DC, 20006

You may unsubscribe here

It looks like this company sells SEO bullsh*t and targets creators of new domains with spam. It seems like a pretty well put together scam but it definitely did at first seem legit when I first received it since they display an account number (which is made up) and they also have my domain name and my first and last name (which are publicly available since it is a .com site).

The email was from a siekekd.com domain which has pretty much no information about it online.

Is anyone familiar with these types of emails?

Buford T Justice

Why would you be charged late fees for not registering with a search engine?

Aswerty

It looks to be an attempt to induce urgency to your actions in the hope that you won't notice its a scam.

And I'm sure there is a boat load of people who don't have a notion as to whether search engines charge for being indexed. From what I can remember some search engines used to charge you if you wanted to force once of their spiders to scan your site. This would generally be done if you were improving your SEO and wanted to see immediate results. I don't think this is general practice anymore though.

M.T.D

You will also get emails and even posted letters coming up to domain renewal time offering big discounts (off an inflated price) to renew your domain for 5 and 10 years. The letter just glosses over the bit about changing registrars.
If there is a way to get money off an inexperienced/new website owner, somebody will be trying it.

tricky D

It's a scam. Search engine registration by an expiration date is pure horse manure. Whois is also obfuscated using a Panamanian cloaker.

A quick Google of the address leads to this: http://squelchdesign.com/web-design-newbury/search-registration-scams/ which gets to the crunch about half way down.

Filter as spam and bin it.

Aswerty

Good to see that this particular scam is fairly well known. I can definitely understand less technical people getting pulled into it.

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at it anyways.