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.<\/p>\n\n
This afternoon brought a cracker. An outfit calling itself the Internet Listing Service<\/a> sent a fake invoice It’s hard to believe that anyone will fall for this version, but how many suckers do they need to cover their costs?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading demanding<\/del> suggesting that I pay £65 or “best value” £260.00<\/strong> 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.”<\/span> is now about three times the size that it used to be, and much more prominently displayed. UPDATE <\/span>still, apparently, illegal<\/a> in the USA.<\/span><\/p>\n\n