USDomainlicensing.com spam

When I received the following email, I was scared for a moment that I might not have taken care of renewing one of my domains, but I think panic is exactly what the senders had intended to provoke:

US Domain Licensing
130 Church St Suite 280 New York, NY 10007
Web: www.USDomainlicensing.com
Email: support@usdomainlicensing.com
Phone: 1 800 690 1269

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Final Notice Of Domain Extension
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ATT:

ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT
joewein
jwspamspy@pobox.com
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
www.jwspamspy.us Notice Tracking Number: EXE2799704

Please be advised that the above noted domain name has now become available for registration. Consequently the possibility of a conflicting domain registration may occur. As the registrant of the commerce extension, you have been granted the first right to use preference in securing the intellectual property for the United States country code. If you choose to waive this right, the name will be available for public registration.

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Please note that businesses and consumers are increasingly losing the rights to their domain names caused by Domain Hijacking, Registrant/Registrar mistake, inadvertence, or Blocked Emails.
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This is an urgent domain notice to verify the rights to your name to prevent 3rd party infringement and unintentional name loss. Our organization is responsible for verifying the public and private Intellectual Property rights of domain holders, and to carry out UDRP Disputes according to the guidelines:

Protecting a domain name registrant or trademark owner from confusing and/or conflicting domain name registrations is not the responsibility of the domain and trademark registration processes. In the event of a registration of the above noted domain by a third party, the UDRP may be applied under the following conditions.

You may loose your domain if a complainant/competitor proves that each of these three elements are present with your domain registration. – For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:

(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith.

.(i) You acquired the domain primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant/ trademark or service mark owner, or to their competitor, or (ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, therefore revealing a pattern of such conduct, or (iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor, or (iv) by using the domain name, to create confusion with the complainant’s mark.

Note: You may disregard this notice. If you disregard this notice or fail to reply:
(a) The licensing rights of this domain name may be assigned to any other applicant, (b) UDL and or any ICANN accredited registrar will not be liable for loss of domain name license, identical or confusingly similar use of your company’s domain name; or interruption of business activity or business losses.

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PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:
If you fail to reply to UDL this domain may be registered by any third party without further notice. To protect the intellectual property rights to this name, you are required to advise us of your intent to (a) secure this domain name or (b) to leave this domain name for Public Registration.

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Call 1 800 690 1269
Notice Tracking Number: EXE2799704

Sounds terribly official and scary, but I’ve never owned any “.us” domains, so there is no domain registration to extend. Not being based in the United States, I have no plans to register any .us domains. I do own the .com and .net variants of the domain in question though and they are far more useful for commercial purposes.

These people seem to try to frighten recipients of their spam into signing up for a .us domain. They are not cheap: From the FAQ on their website it looks like they charge US$70 for two years.

Reputable registrars offer .us domains for around $20 for 2 years, so it’s unlikely anyone would pay $70 to register one through these people unless prompted to do so by deceptive advertising, even if they had a need for a .us domain in the first place.

By the way, domains USDomainlicensing.us and USDomainlicensing.net were still available when I checked, so they themselves don’t practice what they preach. The same people own domainregistryrights.com, which was registered about two years earlier (May 2008) than usdomainlicensing.com (February 2010).

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3 thoughts on “USDomainlicensing.com spam

  1. I’m little bit dismayed that someone who is concerned about spam as you seem to be would actually allow the first 2 comments above to even get posted. I get comment spam like that to my blog all the time and Akismet does a 99% effective job of catching it. Also, I moderate all new comment posts so the few that Akismet misses don’t get posted inadvertently.

  2. I use Spam Karma to protect my blog from comment spam and it does a great job, but obviously it is not perfect, as you can see from the two comments which I’ve now manually deleted. If something passes Spam Karma it gets posted, but I usually catch it when I review the new comment lists later.

  3. Our company received a notice that our domain name was to expire and we needed to respond by 12-21-2011. And also, it said this was the final notice. So I called 1-800-690-1269 (Domain Protection Services) and told them I reveived a domain expire notice. Then I told them I checked the WHOIS database for our domain with the tool at http://dwhois.net/ and saw that our company domain doesn’t expire until June of 2012. They quickly then changed the tune of the story to “If you don’t want to register the .US website (example http://weatherchannel.US) then you can disregard this notice.” This is a scam.

    If you receive an email like this simply forward it to: SPAM@UCE.GOV
    You can also fill out a FTC complaint here: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=enCaller: Domain Protection Services

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