In case you’ve ever owned a site title, the possibilities are good that in some unspecified time in the future you’ve obtained a snail mail letter which seems to be a invoice for a site or website-related companies. In actuality, these deceptive missives attempt to trick folks into paying for ineffective companies they by no means ordered, don’t want, and possibly won’t ever obtain. Right here’s a have a look at the newest incarnation of this rip-off — DomainNetworks — and a few clues about who could also be behind it.
The DomainNetworks mailer might reference a site that’s or was at one level registered to your title and handle. Though the letter contains the phrases “advertising companies” within the higher proper nook, the remainder of the missive is deceptively designed to appear like a invoice for companies already rendered.
DomainNetworks claims that itemizing your area with their promotion companies will lead to elevated visitors to your web site. It is a doubtful declare for a corporation that seems to be an entire fabrication, as we’ll see in a second. However fortunately, the proprietors of this enterprise weren’t so troublesome to trace down.
The web site Domainnetworks[.]com says it’s a enterprise with a submit workplace field in Hendersonville, N.C., and one other handle in Santa Fe, N.M. There are a couple of random, non-technology companies tied to the telephone quantity listed for the Hendersonville handle, and the New Mexico handle was utilized by a number of no-name website hosting corporations.
Nonetheless, there’s little related to those addresses and telephone numbers that get us any nearer to discovering out who’s working Domainnetworks[.]com. And neither entity seems to be an energetic, official firm of their supposed state of residence, no less than based on every state’s Secretary of State database.
The Higher Enterprise Bureau itemizing for DomainNetworks provides it an “F” ranking, and contains greater than 100 opinions by folks offended at receiving considered one of these scams by way of snail mail. Helpfully, the BBB says DomainNetworks beforehand operated beneath a special title: US Area Authority LLC.
DomainNetworks has an “F” repute with the Higher Enterprise Bureau.
Copies of snail mail rip-off letters from US Area Authority posted on-line present that this entity used the area usdomainauthority[.]com, registered in Could 2022. The Usdomainauthority mailer additionally featured a Henderson, NC handle, albeit at a special submit workplace field.
Usdomainauthority[.]com is now not on-line, and the positioning appears to have blocked its pages from being listed by the Wayback Machine at archive.org. However looking on a protracted snippet of textual content from DomainNetworks[.]com about refund requests reveals that this textual content was discovered on only one different energetic web site, based on publicwww.com, a service that indexes the HTML code of current web sites and makes it searchable.
A misleading snail mail solicitation from DomainNetwork’s earlier iteration — US Area Authority. Picture: Joerussori.com
That different web site is a site registered in January 2023 referred to as thedomainsvault[.]com, and its registration particulars are likewise hidden behind privateness companies. Thedomainsvault’s “Steadily Requested Questions” web page is sort of much like the one on the DomainNetworks web site; each start with the query of why the corporate is sending a mailer that appears like a invoice for area companies.
Thedomainsvault[.]com contains no helpful details about the entity or individuals who function it; clicking the “Contact-us” hyperlink on the positioning brings up a web page with placeholder Lorem Ipsum textual content, a contact type, and a telephone variety of 123456789.
Nonetheless, looking passive DNS information at DomainTools.com for thedomainsvault[.]com reveals that in some unspecified time in the future whoever owns the area instructed incoming electronic mail to be despatched to ubsagency@gmail.com.
The primary consequence that at present pops up when looking for “ubsagency” in Google is ubsagency[.]com, which says it belongs to a Las Vegas-based Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization) and digital advertising concern generically named each United Enterprise Service and United Enterprise Providers. UBSagency’s web site is hosted on the identical Ann Arbor, Mich. based mostly internet hosting agency (A2 Internet hosting Inc) as thedomainsvault[.]com.
UBSagency’s LinkedIn web page says the corporate has workplaces in Vegas, Half Moon Bay, Calif., and Renton, Wash. However as soon as once more, not one of the addresses listed for these workplaces reveal any apparent clues about who runs UBSagency. And as soon as once more, none of those entities seem to exist as official companies of their claimed state of residence.
Looking on ubsagency@gmail.com in Constella Intelligence reveals the handle was used someday earlier than February 2019 to create an account beneath the title “SammySam_Alon” on the inside adorning web site Houzz.com. In January 2019, Houzz acknowledged {that a} information breach uncovered account info on an undisclosed variety of prospects, together with consumer IDs, one-way encrypted passwords, IP addresses, metropolis and ZIP codes, in addition to Fb info.
SammySam_Alon registered at Houzz utilizing an Web handle in Huntsville, Ala. (68.35.149.206). Constella says this handle was related to the e-mail tropicglobal@gmail.com, which is also tied to a number of different “Sammy” accounts at totally different shops on-line.
Constella additionally says a extremely distinctive password re-used by tropicglobal@gmail.com throughout quite a few websites was utilized in reference to just some different electronic mail accounts, together with shenhavgroup@gmail.com, and distributorinvoice@mail.com.
The shenhavgroup@gmail.com handle was used to register a Twitter account for a Sam Orit Alon in 2013, whose account says they’re affiliated with the Shenhav Group. In keeping with DomainTools, shenhavgroup@gmail.com was liable for registering roughly two dozen domains, together with the now-defunct unitedbusinessservice[.]com.
Constella additional finds that the handle distributorinvoice@mail.com was used to register an account at whmcs.com, a website hosting platform that suffered a breach of its consumer database a number of years again. The title on the WHMCS account was Shmuel Orit Alon, from Kidron, Israel.
UBSagency additionally has a Fb web page, or perhaps “had” is the operative phrase as a result of somebody seems to have defaced it. Loading the Fb web page for UBSagency reveals a number of of the photographs have been overlaid or changed with a message from somebody who’s actually disenchanted with Sam Alon.
“Sam Alon is a LIAR, THIEF, COWARD AND HAS A VERY SMALL D*CK,” reads one of many messages:
The present Fb profile web page for UBSagency features a brand that’s much like the DomainNetworks brand.
The brand within the UBSagency profile picture features a graphic of what seems to be a magnifying glass with a line that zig-zags by bullet factors inside and outdoors the circle, a singular sample that’s remarkably much like the emblem for DomainNetworks:
The logos for DomainNetworks (left) and UBSagency.
Constella additionally discovered that the identical Huntsville IP handle utilized by Sam Alon at Houzz was related to yet one more Houzz account, this one for somebody named “Eliran.”
The UBSagency Fb web page options a number of messages from an Eliran “Dani” Benz, who’s referred to by commenters as an worker or associate with UBSagency. The final check-in on Benz’s profile is from a seashore at Rishon Letziyon in Israel earlier this yr.
Neither Mr. Alon nor Mr. Benz responded to a number of requests for remark.
It could be troublesome to consider that anybody would pay an bill for a site title or search engine optimization service they by no means ordered. Nonetheless, there’s loads of proof that these phony payments usually get processed by administrative personnel at organizations that find yourself paying the requested quantity as a result of they assume it was owed for some companies already supplied.
In 2018, KrebsOnSecurity printed How Web Savvy are Your Leaders?, which examined public information to indicate that dozens of cities, cities, faculty districts and even political campaigns throughout the USA received snookered into paying these rip-off area invoices from an analogous rip-off firm referred to as WebListings Inc.
In 2020, KrebsOnSecurity featured a deep dive into who was possible behind the WebListings rip-off, which had been sending out these snail mail rip-off letters for over a decade. That investigation revealed the rip-off’s connection to a multi-level advertising operation run out of the U.Okay., and to 2 brothers dwelling in Scotland.
