I’ve been getting a lot of emails forwarded to me of late from clients from their respective registrars, such as Network Solutions and GoDaddy. (Must be that time of year.)
The emails state at the top "Important Information About Your Account", which is often a tip off that this is some sort of scam. However, in this case, it’s legit.
ICANN, (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) polices the registrars. They state:
At least annually, a registrar must present to the registrant the current Whois information, and remind the registrant that provision of false Whois information can be grounds for cancellation of their domain name registration. Registrants must review their Whois data, and make any corrections.
For the full document you can read the Whois Data Reminder Policy.
In short, they want to make sure that your contact info is up-to-date. I’ve worked with clients who lost their domain names because they changed emails, phone numbers and mailing addresses without updating the information at their registrar. When it came time to remind these people that their domain was up for renewal, the registrar had no way of getting in touch with them.
Be alert, though. I can see how unscrupulous scam artists (are there any other kind?) might find a way to take advantage of this. I would recommend that instead of clicking on a link within an email you open up the nearest browser and go directly to http://www.networksolutions.com or http://www.godaddy.com or whatever the URL of your registrar and look your information up manually.
Dear Technorati Support,
HELLO! TECHNORATI SUPPORT!! If you’re out there, please take this photo and use it on my profile!! Stat!
