Scammers. What would we do without them? We have talked about the Domain Registry of America Scam before, but we recently got a letter in the mail from one of them and wanted to share it with you so you don’t get scammed too. As you can see, they are trying to claim that if the domain is not renewed through them, it will be lost. They are also charging $35 a year, $20+ more than the industry average for a year of a .com domain name. What the letter doesn’t say is that it is a total scam. (Click here to view a larger image of the letter)

How did they get my contact information?
When you register a domain, you need to provide the registrar with a valid name, mailing address and email address to provide to the WHOIS database, without this information you cannot register the domain. Shady domain registries troll the WHOIS records for domains that are soon to be expired and send a letter or email to the owner of the domain. It usually says something along the lines of “your domain is expiring soon, you must renew it before you lose it” What they don’t mention is that your domain is not currently registered with them and the transaction would actually be a domain transfer, not a renewal and at a price that is most likely 3 times as much!

You can avoid this entire scenario by purchasing or adding Private Registration to your domain name. Private Registration removes your contact information and inserts ours. We filter out all of the bad emails and snail mail and only forward the important stuff.

Receive free Private Registration when you add it to a domain or register a new domain! Expires 10.31.12. Coupon Code:  PRIVATE

*not valid on renewals or with any other offers, management reserves all rights.

Have you or a friend ever received one of these letters or email scams?

Did you know that last year alone there were 247,713 patent applications in the United States? The first Patent Act of the U.S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled “An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts”. But at what point do Patents stop promoting “useful arts”? The recent Samsung vs. Apple Patent lawsuits has brought forward some funny and ridiculous patents. Things like “rounded corners” on smartphone devices and finger gestures to switch between screens. Silly patents aren’t the only thing that is inhibiting discovery and innovation, patent trolls are too.

According to Wikipedia, a Patent Troll is someone that:

-Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;

-Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;

-Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;

-Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or

-Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.

Gigaom recently released an article about Patent Trolls. It disclosed that Twitter because it is a large and profitable company, is often the target of patent trolls. These frivolous lawsuits typically take months, sometimes years to fight and hundreds of thousands of dollars. The troll isn’t even held responsible for these costs if the lawsuit is found to have been filed without merit.

A recent study at Boston University estimated that in 2011 alone, these baseless patent troll lawsuits cost U.S. technology companies more than 29 billion dollars.

Twitter and other companies that fall victim to these trolls are often forced to employ large teams of lawyers and employees focused solely on researching and fighting the lawsuits. If a patent troll were to attack a small company or startup, this could easily close their doors forever, further inhibiting innovation and discovery, all of which our country (and the world) were built on.

There is something that needs to be done to stop these baseless lawsuits from scaring individuals and companies into doing amazing new things. A new bill was announced in Congress last month by Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act [PDF], would force these patent trolls to pay for all fees related to the frivolous lawsuits if it is found to have no merit, thereby hopefully curbing some of these lawsuits from ever being filed.

What are your thoughts or comments on patent trolls? Please share your comments below.

Also, be sure to share this if you enjoyed it and do not feed the trolls.

That’s right, it is our birthday today, lucky number 13! We want to celebrate with all of our users who have helped us get here by offering a giveaway! Just answer the following question for a chance to win. The first 20 users to answer will win a No-IP t-shirt!

Tell us how long you have been using No-IP and what you use us for.

The winners are as follows:

Claudio Antonelli
Karl Håkansson
Ivan Tomovic
Robert Hedell
MANSOOR
Jimmy Utterström
xzero8192
David T Connolly
FRANCISCO EDUARDO ASCENCIO DOMINGUEZ
Charles Farence
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Jason
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jack
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mahmoud
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Congrats! If you are one of the winners, please email ngoguen-giveaway[at]no-ip[dot]com with your T-Shirt size and mailing address.