Phishing/Scam emails - Domain name renewals

If you've had your domain name for over a year now, you might be contacted by a domain renewal scammer

In years gone by, your personal information would have been available to the public via a WHOIS service which eventually could easily be hidden using a WHOIS privacy service for customers using OpenSRS this used to be a free option, but is now a chargeable service.  However, thanks to the GDPR in most cases your information is now redacted.  To find out what information is available to the public - do a WHOIS search for your domain 

Now the date your domain expiries is still public information and do you have your email address on your website? Mmmm! well you could still be contacted by a domain renewal scammer

The easiest way to avoid being scammed is to renew your domain in advance and not leaving it to the last moment, or if your domain is very valuable to you - to renew it for several years, rather than the usual one year, why not renew it for two years and put a reminder into your calendar to add a year way before time. In most cases you can renew your domain for up to 10 years.  If you leave it to the last moment and there's a problem with your card, like it's expired or has insufficient funds, renew it in good time

If you already have your email address visible on your website, it might be best to switch to contact form, that way someone has to fill out of form to be able to contact you

If for whatever reason your information is available to the public in a WHOIS search, you must make sure that your information is up to date!  In an issue from a few years ago, someone had written to the address on WHOIS and the person who owned the domain had moved twice since they registered the domain and didn't keep their information up to date.  Now we're not sure why they were written to when they could have just emailed, but the domain hadn't been registered with us and that registrar had suspended the domain due to the information being out of date, causing some issues as the website and email address were now offline, they found it very difficult to access their account and update their address

If your going to move, along with updating your address with your bank etc, add updating your WHOIS information as well