I received today a scam “OSIFY.com Expiration”, I call it a scam because I am sure on my domain expiration date and registrar.

The email sent to me, look like an invoice, with a content as:

Attn

This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your search engine registration for OSIFY.COM.

Failure to complete your search engine registration by Apr 7, 2011 may result in the cancellation of this offer (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).

Your registration includes search engine submission for OSIFY.COM for 1 year. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer by Apr 7, 2011. This notice is not an invoice. It is a courtesy reminder to register OSIFY.COM for search engine listing so that your customers can locate you on the web.

They give a payment link: http://domregistrat.com/order/xxx

Why I could identify this:

• I use firefox with add-on WOT (Web Of Trust) that enable me to see a poor reputation of the given link. With this reason, I have to take attention on each link of the red color, mostly I don’t open it.
• The given link of payment is in protocol: HTTP so it’s not a secure payment. NEVER PAY ONLINE WITH UNSECURED PROTOCOL, the secure protocol is HTTPS. And even with secured protocol, you have to check which company verified the certificate, example: a well known company is VeriSign Inc. But always search the payment site before proceed.
• The email sending to me is from the domain: 0371nk.com (shielashephard@0371nk.com), a Chinese website (use Google translate to read), it’s kind of a marketing website so can be a public email domain. As I never buy any service from such website, it should not send to me, ONLY SCAM possibly.
• And as I said above, I know the company I bought the domain or registered my domain, so why not I don’t go to check with them first?

So totally suck kind of email is a scam, please take this into account when you got similar email.

So my domain information is in public!

Yes, when we buy domain, the registrars always ask additional payment for domain privacy that mostly I or you don’t want to buy it as we don’t want to pay much.

If for your business domain, please always consider to buy for domain privacy.

Just for your information, hope it helps you also to identify such scam!