Silly company names are the postal service equivalent of spam filters. Just as I always give the Independent’s City Road postcode on forms which want to know mine when it’s none of their business — and the fax machine’s number for voice calls — my entries in domain name registries show that I work for a company called World Domination Enterprises, or sometimes Spooging Moose Corporate Communications. These are names only a database could love, so when any envelope turns up for either of them I know it’s an attempted con.
This afternoon brought a cracker. An outfit calling itself the Internet Listing Service sent a fake invoice demanding suggesting that I pay £65 or “best value” £260.00 for five years. And what to I get for this? A “Website Address Listing”, which means “domain name submission to 20 major search engines”. I’m pretty certain this is the same bunch of conmen who ran a slightly different racket as registrars until caught by the Trading Standards Authority. The print saying “This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated.” is now about three times the size that it used to be, and much more prominently displayed. UPDATE still, apparently, illegal in the USA.
It’s hard to believe that anyone will fall for this version, but how many suckers do they need to cover their costs?