Often I get calls from clients when they receive a bill like notice in the mail from a company called “Domain Registry of Canada”.  The intent or layout of the  notice is to confuse you into switching companies for yoru domain registration.  Even their company name lends to the idea that they are the “Canadian Domain Rgeistry”. This company send out mass volumes of ad-mail directly to domain owners and the letters are designed to appear as an official government organization or is somehow related to the Canadian Internet Registration Authoritty (CIRA).

As a domain owner, sadly you have to be on the watch for deceptive or confusing notices asking you to pay annual fees or to renew. Often these notices are sent in a brown windowed envelope similar to official government type letters using an official Canada Post branded postage stamp to appear to be an official government notice. This is very intentional and I have personally have had to look closely at the notice to ensure it is a fraud. Often buried in the second or third paragraph there is mention “this is not a bill”. Unfortunately this mailing is designed to appear like an invoice which suggests that if you do not act immediately you to loose your domain and your website.

The Domain Registry of Canada (DROC) has been running the same scam for over a decade. They have used various company names such as “Internet Registry of Canada”, “Domain Registry of America”, “Domain Renewal Group”, “Domain Registry of Europe”, “NameJuice”, “Brandon Gray Internet Services”, or “DROC”.

The same technique to fool domain owners into transferring their domain away.

If you do not make your domain contact information private,  your domain name registration record is then publicly available whois database. (Here is how you can add the protection to your personal information when registering your domain.)  Be sure to add Private Registration to you domains to limit these type of scams.