In the past two months, we’ve seen a distinct rise in the number of customers receiving solicitations from DNS Services in Vancouver, WA. These solicitations are misleading in that they present themselves more as an invoice than a sales pitch. Typically they will identify you, your business and us by listing information on the nameservers we use to keep your website and email traffic flowing. You’ll see something like:
- HOST.EW3D.COM
- NS1.EW3D.NET
- NS2.EW3D.COM
Rest assured that these are not legitimate. This company has a hefty stack of complaints on the site RipOffReport. If you’d like to read more, a simple Google search for “DNS Services” will yield a mountain of information.
How did these people get my information?
As you likely know, your domain name — mybedandbreakfast.com — is secured with a yearly registration. This registration includes your business contact information, and it is visible to the public. The regulations governing use of this information dictate that it cannot be used for these sorts of marketing purposes, but this is a difficult cause to litigate. Further, it is up to the registrars to take on the cause.
In the interim, you do have options. Most registrars offer a private registration which makes this information invisible to the public, replacing it with a generic contact which can be used to contact you if the cause is legitimate. While we will happily help you activate this service, we recommend against it. Search engines do use the information on your domain name as a part of ranking your website returns. As you know, every little bit helps!
