Every few months, I get a letter in the mail from this company, telling me that I need to renew my domain names with them or risk losing my online identity.

Now, I’ve been ignoring these, because I know full well that I did not register any domain names with this company. All of my domain names are registered through my own services.

However, I just received a phone call today from a client who also received a letter. Fortunately, he knew that he had registered his domain name with me, and just wanted to verify that if he paid his domain registration invoice that I sent him via email, his domain would be safe. I assured him that it would be and that he could just toss the letter.

What bothers me about this whole scenario though is that I have clients out there who have registered their domain names through me, through GoDaddy, or whoever — and who may not realize that the letter they recieve from Libery Names Of America is not an invoice.

Liberty goes out of their way to make the letter look like an invoice (even though they do have one boldfaced sentence saying the letter is not a bill).

They claim that you can avoid facing complication in the future by renewing and transfering your domain name to them.

My thoughts: Aren’t they creating complications by sending out these invoices to people who already have their domain names registered elsewhere?!

Libery claims that if you renew with them today, you’ll save a lot of money. Well, I charge $15 for domain registrations and renewals. GoDaddy charges about $10. Liberty charges $25. Hmmm….

The company also states that their domain names include free DNS, URL and email forwarding. I laughed when I read this.

First of all, DNS services are provided by your ISP and web host, not through the registrar. The URL is the same thing as your domain name. And if you have a web hosting account, you should have email forwarding built into that service.

So, the things they are “giving” you for free either aren’t theirs to give, or are free with everyone else, too.

I tried to read the small print on the back — but the print is in a light grey, is very tiny, and my children have hidden my magnifying glass.

Failing this attempt, I decided to read around on the internet to see what other people say about Liberty Names of America:

• Many Say Liberty Names Of America Are Scammers
• Discussion on WebHostingTalk.com
• Domain Fraud Alert: Slamming

My recommendation: If you receive a letter from this company, we recommend you report it to the following organizations:

• United States Postal Inspection Service
• ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
• Internet Fraud Complaint Center

We also recommend you go right now to Domain Tools and enter your domain name to check your WHOIS record. This will show you who is your current registrar. You should only send money to the company that you actually registered your domain name with.

If you are registered with Watersweb, your WHOIS will look like this:

ICANN Registrar: ENOM, INC.

Further down, you will see this:

Registration Service Provided By: Watersweb Solutions, LLC
Contact:
Visit: http://www.waterswebhosting.net

This means that you have registered your domain name through Watersweb. I provide my registration services through Enom, which allows me to provide the services, while allowing you to register the domain in your own name.

If you have any questions, please let me know!