One of my domains was coming up for renewal recently, it was already renewed, I'd taken care of it, done deal. I'm guessing that this rather opportunistic company was monitoring domain renewals and spotted an opportunity.

Then I got a rather bizarre looking email. It looked a lot like an invoice, and was sneakily designed and worded to look like a domain related issue. It uses lots of semi scare mongering terminology and shock value statements about offers expiring! And last chance to make sure things are in place!

The whole thing is a con to try and get you to sign up to a 'search engine submission' service. Which anyone in web technology will tell you isn't managed in this way at all. I mean it can be, but only if you want to pay over the odds for a service that largely takes place by itself, or with minimal management from a web administrator.

Shocking behaviour from this company, its not very convincing if you are technically aware, but for 'Joe public' could cause a random outburst of knee-jerk payment. Warn your less tech aware relatives.

[Screen shot of email below]