Internet Corporation Listing Service, icls.net

15 years ago

They're baaaaack!

Back last December I got an invoice — er, sorry, a solicitation for services, cunningly disguised as an invoice — from this company for another domain I administer. I wrote it up as a blog post, shredding the invoice, oops, solicitation afterwards.

Well, they just sent me one for boyet.com, this here domain what you connected to for these pearls of wisdom from yours truly. And the price has gone up to $65! And still they'll accept checks only (because it's too easy for you to get your credit card company to reverse the charge if you pay them in error). Just says respectable company, doesn't it?

All for what, exactly? "Domain name submission to 25 established search engines." Be still my beating heart. "Initial and quarterly search engine positions and ranking reports sent to you by email." Swoon. Can't wait for them to promise submission to Twitter or some stupid "social media" pledge.

If you get one of these, dump it. It's a scam, in my opinion. It's also very annoying that they datamine whois to get administrator names and addresses, something that's prohibited by ICANN if I recall correctly.

Now playing:
Alex Reece - Jazz Master
(from The K&D Sessions Disc 1)


Wed 28-Oct-2009 7:43 PM Blog / tags: scam search-engine
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2 Responses

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#1 Jim Clay said...
29-Oct-09 7:36 AM

I have an Enom reseller account and register domains for several people. I usually put in my info as the admin/billing/contact on these just for the fact that it allows me to filter these things out for the people I register the domains for. And I get a lot of them that go in the trash. Most people don't want to have to know to watch out for this stuff. I hope these people get taken down at some point!

julian m bucknall avatar
#2 julian m bucknall said...
29-Oct-09 9:11 AM

Jim: completely concur. The first time I got one of these a couple of years or more ago, even I "stumbled" a bit: it looks like an invoice that must be paid, it's in the Network Solutions blue (my registrar), and looked "official". But, no, it's just a snail mail scam. Bah.

(Aside: I thought I'd screw with them and send the enclosed envelope back with nothing in it, but they're such a "respectable company" that you have to put your own stamp on it.)

Cheers, Julian

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