Registrar Sniping – A new form of Domain Sniping
 We manage numerous domains for our clients. Recently we received an email stating that one of our client’s domains is about to expire and that we should renew it. The contents of the email are as follows:
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The following domain name is coming up for renewal:
DOMAIN NAME: clientdomain.com
EXPIRE DATE: 2005-07-21 14:28:15
To renew this domain, please go to the following URL:
https://www.SOMEREGISTRAR.com/folderName/add_renew.php?domain_name[]=ClientDomain
To renew other domain names in your account go to the following URL:
https://www.SOMEREGISTRAR.com/anotherFolder/list_domain.php
To allow this domain name to expire simply ignore this and any future renewal notices for this domain.
Thank you.
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Without thinking too much I clicked on the lick to renew the domain. When I tried to login to the account with the username and password that I had on file it would not let me login. I clicked on the “lost password function” and waited for an email to be sent to me with the correct username and password.
Now here’s the catch….that registrar is not where the domain is registered! I didn’t catch onto that little fact until I could not login to the account. Double checking everything, we have a year and a few months before the domain expires.
The fact that I could not login to the account saved us the mistake of this attempted snipe. It gave me the extra few minutes I needed to verify everything and see that the registrar was trying to pull a fast one over us. Apparently this type of marketing is beginning to be more common, and we all have to be very careful.
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