There’s two parts to every website – the domain (that’s the www.insertyourdomain.com) and the hosting (that’s the black server box that it lives on). When you register your domain you will have done it through a company that registers your domain name for you.
The most common examples of this would be 1and1, GoDaddy or 123reg.
In most cases, when you register your domain you’ll select an option that says ‘Auto Renew’. This saves you from having to remember when you registered your domain and when you have to renew it. When you do renew your domain you’ll usually be sent a receipt of payment from the company that’s renewing it for you, as well as on some occasions an email from them saying that it’s been renewed for you.
If for some reason, say for example your card has expired over the past year, they’ll also then usually send you a notice saying that your card details are no longer working and that they should be updated in order to allow you to renew your domain within a certain time period.

Avoiding domain renewal scams

One thing all of this correspondence has in common is that they will only ever come from the company that you registered your domain through – that’s 1and1, GoDaddy or 123reg (or any other that you selected).
They won’t use a third party.
There are more and more scammers out there trying to convince people with domain renewals coming up that they should be paying them rather than the company you registered with. The emails they send can often be quite convincing as they will usually know when your domain is due to expire and send it around the same time.
So how can you tell if it’s a scam or a real email?
If you’re unsure of who’s emailing you check the ‘from’ email address – is the final part from your registering company? If not, then deal with caution.

In the screenshot above givterdave.info is not the register of of the domain, so their email can be ignored as it’s spam.
The other easy way to tell if someone is spamming you for your domain renewal is that somewhere in their email it will make reference to ‘SEO services’ rather than actual domain renewal, which is what they’re usually asking you to pay for.
Here’s an example of this from a recent scam email forwarded on to us:

If you’re unsure of whether or not the email you’ve received about your domain is real or fake, it’s worth forwarding it on to your website designer or IT provider.
For more information on our digital marketing services or to ask us a question about your online presence please give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk – we’re always happy to help.