March 25, 2008 by kim.milton.

Today I received what looked like an invoice (Domain Listing Service) for two of my Domain names. Each bill was for $75. I’m not sure how Dlscorp.net found my contact information; my current Registrar has my old address listed. I have a lot of domain names, but the only common factors for these two are that I attempted to transfer to the Registrar where my other names are managed and the attempt failed.

Neither of these sites is developed so I know I never requested any listing service. A matter of fact, the service they offer is a waste of money.

The disclaimer is on the back of the bill. Do you read the back of your bills?

I found a lot of sites calling this a scam and the reason I agree is:

• This document looks like a bill (not a solicitation).
• There is a reference number and notification date.
• Payment information states “remit payment on or before April 18, 2008” (there is nothing stating this is a special that expires so it looks like a bill due date)
• The disclaimer is placed on the back of the advertisement. (The pages are not numbered, but both mailers were folded so that you open to the other side of the form)
• The text formatting on the front of the advertisement is very standard with bold Capitalized headers followed by normal looking text.
• The text on the back of the form:
  • Underlined headers for the first two items with content off to the right
  • The third item has bold header information with bold text off to the right
  • The disclaimer has no header with small bold text for the first line. The second and third lines are on the line directly below it capitalized, bold, and centered.
  • The background has a gradient and the disclaimer is at the faded part of the gradient.

It took me three times reading the document before I saw the disclaimer.

Kim

Posted in Internet Development | No Comments »

September 6, 2007 by kim.milton.

Over the last year or so I’ve noticed that expired domains seem to stay in limbo land for a long time. Somehow these same domains are snatched up before the average person can purchase them. I decided to research how to purchase expiring domains:

I read How to Snatch an Expired Domain by Mike Davidson

This article helped me a lot! There is one recent change that I know of: Snapnames now starts bidding at $99 for Domains expired from Network Solutions. Even though the starting bid has increased by $39 this is a very good deal. If you use one of the other services there is no guarantee. I have purchased four domains over the last week through Snapnames and watched some cool high end auctions.

This next site Find Your Domain NOW is an article to tickle your curiosity with an Ad.

I like that the owner was able to get second listing with the following Google search (how to buy expired domains). This page didn’t really help me get a domain, but it did help me understand why other people buy them.

At webmasterworld.com in the Domain Names discussion there are a lot of good tidbits.

Webwork seems to have some good information and suggestions.

I read a few more articles but pretty much the Mike Davidson article gave me the bulk of information I needed to be successful in purchasing a good dot com domain. I don’t look at all expiring domains, I look at Registrars that have a relationship with Snapnames and there are plenty of great names to be had.

My recent purchases are:

• Photoaccents.net
• Gigphoto.com
• Gurutricks.com
• Prewii.com

The total spent to purchase the four domain listed above was $431 (two of the auctions were listed at the old starting bid of $60). Just because they went to auction doesn’t mean I spent an arm and a leg to get them. I was the only bidder in two of the auctions. There were two auctions I didn’t win because I am not a high roller, they went for $12,666 and 4,200. I’ll update you when I buy more Domains. I have about 20 more auctions this month.

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August 29, 2007 by kim.milton.

My best friend for many years!

Posted in Life | No Comments »

August 28, 2007 by kim.milton.

Death is a hard reality. When we are born it’s inevitable, some day each and every one of us is going to die. I lost my Grandfather and my Uncle when I was in my teens but for over 20 years I didn’t have anyone close to me die. I thought I was lucky! That seems silly now. Dying is part of life.

I lost my puppy yesterday. People misunderstand my phrase, I didn’t misplace her and she didn’t run away, I lost my best friend. My baby was going on 14 years old and she was the best! She had a real hard time near the end. She’s been on pain medication for close to two years and her hips just keep getting worse. The vet tried a new treatment that has worked on older dogs with arthritis but it didn’t help. All it seemed to do was make her miserable. I’m sure she didn’t like the way it made her feel. I could tell by her actions and reaction to me when it was time for meds. I had a very hard time and felt guilty for even considering having her put to sleep. It was hard, I was morning her death while she was here with me and in pain.

Sunday I made a decision that I wouldn’t make her go through the pain anymore. We had a little slumber party in the Family room. Lassie has three beds; one for each room she spends much time in these days. She slept on the softest bed and I used the other two for my bed that night. I gave her as many Chicken Jerky Treats as she wanted. I’m getting sleepy now. I’ll write more later…

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August 20, 2007 by kim.milton.

I just checked my Spam folder and found a new take on a previous Spam.

The link on this page navigates to http://dolmisdes.cn/p/?&pid=1359 again! Going back through my spam folder, there are 12 email messages over five days with the same subject.

So, I searched the web for My Canadian Pharmacy Ltd (listed as the actual company on the website) and the first result (through Google) is My Canadian Pharmacy - Spamwiki. Wow, this is a very bad Spammer and Thief!

The underlying link is:

http://sethnw.cn/?EILJSMWFxVW3VcW19AWl9CW1tBXkEdV1pc

Whois: sethnw.cn
ISP: Hutchison Global Communications
Organization: HK Cable TV Ltd
Location: JP, Japan

Look at what country the domain is currently being hosted in:

Whois: dolmisdes.cn
ISP: CABLEVISION S.A.
Organization: CABLEVISION S.A.
Location: AR, Argentina

The pictures are being hosted in other country’s:

IP Address: 222.240.146.82
ISP : CHINANET Hunan province network
Organization : CHINANET-HN Changsha node network
Location : CN, China

and

IP Address : 85.92.131.183 [ 85-92-131-183.twiki.magsoft.nl ]
ISP : Hostlab BV
Organization : Webteam ISP
Location : NL, Netherlands

and

IP Address : 193.95.254.71 [ 193.95.254.71 ]
ISP : SiOL Internet d.o.o
Organization : Alcad d.o.o.
Location : SI, Slovenia

and

IP Address : 152.160.50.35 [ 152.160.50.35 ]
ISP : ICNet/Innovative Concepts
Organization : Gelman Sciences

and

IP Address: 213.215.118.41 [ gw118-41.imafex.sk ]
ISP: GTS INEC a.s.
Organization: Liptov Network
Location: SK, Slovaki

This Pharmacy site is not from Canada. The people who created this Spam are linked to credit card fraud, identity theft, and the creation and distribution of child pornography. Most likely the above Service Providers don’t have a clue that there is a problem. What’s nice is that we can share information and make educated decisions as consumers.

Posted in Is it as it seems? | No Comments »

August 13, 2007 by kim.milton.

On 8/10/07 I received the following email:

The link goes to a site with the following logo:

But the site address is at:

http://cb.adprofile.net/lrs/68/index.html?OID=6523&nopop=1&xid=0&CID=110368&SID=310996

Obviously this is an adverting campaign so I navigated to christianfamilyloans.com and found this (a search portal from information.com):

With a popup window for this (you’ll see this company again):

OK, so There is no ChristianFamilyLoans.com, there is a search portal and an Ad for Low Rate Source. So lets go back to the original email and start over. The email link opens this page:

The addresses listed on the Contact Us page are for christianfamilymorgage.com (this page loads a Server not found error)

The address listed on the About Us page is for lowratesource.com (this page loads the LowRateSource site)

I can go on but I think I have found the company. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this company, I don’t have enough information to know for sure.

My Opinion:

If I were looking for a Christian business I would look elsewhere.

Something to think about:

This email and resulting link, have made reference or navigated to the following sites:

• shoppersavin.info (sending site)
• cb.adprofile.net (linked site)
• christianfamilyloans.com (linked site logo)
• christianfamilymorgage.com (email reference)
• lowratesource.com (email reference)

Posted in Is it as it seems? | No Comments »

August 13, 2007 by kim.milton.

I received the following email and seven others like it (except for the from email address) over the last six days:

The email account that received the spam is one from my website. I never register for anything with this email. The from address could be masked by the sender so I kept it private.

They claim to be: US NMA (US National Medical Association) at http://www.us-nma.com/.

• By typing the site address in a web browser, an error page loaded: Error 404 Not Found, The document you requested is not found.
• The link properties are: http://sethnw.cn/?EILJSMWFxVW3VcW19AWl9CW1tBXkEdV1pc
• When the link is active, the site that loads is: http://dolmisdes.cn/p/?&pid=1359 ( A Canadian Pharmacy)

While looking over the website I located the Contact page. The site has a form for reporting spam so I did. I’ll let you know if I hear back from the company.

Update:

The email shown about came in as I was writing this Blog entry so I went back and grabbed a screen capture for the most current spam. Funny thing happened when I clicked on the link, Sever not found for sethnw.cn. I think the Canadian Pharmacy shut down the Spammer. This is a good example of a company that uses an Affiliate program for advertising and an Affiliate that abuses the system.

Not everything online is as it seems!

Kim

Posted in Is it as it seems? | 1 Comment »