Offers from domain resellers evade spam filters

The Internet has created a great amount of business opportunities – most of them legal, some not and some that fall in the gray area between the two extremes.

An example of the latter has been spotted by Avira’s data security expert Sorin Mustaca when he received a curious email that has managed to evade spam filters even though its contents might be considered no less spammy than the incessant onslaught of pharmaceutical spam:

“What really made me look deeper to this email was this sentence: ‘Based on your contact information I see that you own , correct?'” says Mustaca. “I have absolutely nothing to do with online storage, and of course the same with free online storage. So, I assume that they take all domains from some registrar, get the email addresses and send this semi-personalized email.”

Curious about the twist behind this offer, he followed the link to the offered domain, where the company (or domain troll, as he calls it) that sent the email set up a page offering the domain for sale and enumerating the pros of doing so.

Entering in the address bar the URL to the company’s page, he finally revealed that the firm is reselling a great number of domains – something that is not strictly illegal, but it takes advantage of people who might not be Internet-savvy and think that $425 dollars for a domain that usually costs a very small fraction of that is a good deal.

“I don’t like such companies which collect domains based on keywords, register them for some pennies and then try to sell them for a lot of money,” says Mustaca. “But when they also try to advertise these domains by sending spam, then I do have a real problem with them.”