New TLD registry sends spam to people who have registered other new TLDs.
[Update: See statement from the .Top registry below.]
How do you get attention for your new top level domain name in a crowded field? One new top level domain name company has apparently resorted to sending lots of unsolicited email — and likely scraping Whois to do it.
.Top is currently ranked #9 in terms of registrations, surely helped by a 99 cent price tag at some registrars. The company behind it, Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co., Ltd., is also raising awareness by sending spam to people who own other domain names.
Check your spam folder, and you might see what I mean.
I’ve received multiple emails from the registry, pitching .top domain names and referring me to registrars that carry .top (such as 1&1) to register the domain names. At first I figured I was on a list because of this blog, but the address one of the emails was sent to is mostly used in whois.
After posing the question on Twitter yesterday, it indeed appears that the .Top registry is getting email address from whois in order to send spam about .top domain names. It also appears the targeted whois records are for .XYZ domain names.
I’ve confirmed that at least one email from .top went to an email address only used in whois, and the email below shows that .Top was specifically targeting .XYZ registrants with its spam:
Dear registrant,
Hope this mail finds you well.
We see that you registered some .xyz domain names. Would you be interested in another attractive and popular new gTLD, .top? Though only two months old, .top has had the 2nd biggest world wide daily registrations so far.
You can register your desired .top domains on either one of our registrar partners like 101domain, onlinenic, key-systems and one week later 1&1.
If you find your desired domains are reserved or you would like to purchase premium domains, including one/two/three-character, word and all sorted cool ones, please feel free to contact us.
The above email was sent from a representative of the registry’s “Overseas Channel Division”. The .Top registry is based in China.
Update: The .Top registry issued this statement in response to this article:
Hi everyone,
Thank you for all your attention and support for .top and we are truly sorry for any inconvenience or offence we might have caused to you. The email content quoted and behavior reported in below article by Mr. Allemann was actually just a one-day thing on 30th January 2015 (give or take a day for time zone difference), in the hope to help our registrar partners have more registrations. But we realized that this was not a proper way once we were kindly reminded by some friends. So, to all registrars, please rest assured that we won’t contact your customers directly in bad faith against you. Such email sending has long stopped and will not happen again. Thanks.
.TOP Registry
Mar. 9, 2015
Domaining.world says
It’s not only email’s harvested from whois of .xyz, I don’t own a single .xyz.
https://domaining.world/spamming-registry/
They have sent me around 10 email’s since I registered a .top domain.
Kevin Murphy says
These are the guys who “accidentally” billed Facebook $30k for facebook.top, then cut off my zone file access when I reported it. Classy outfit.
Tami Bethune (@BTG_Solutions) says
This week, 2016March6, my business email inbox was filled 90% by .top email solicitations for their roofing, windows, doors, air conditioning, etc. I have created a rule in Outlook to send to SPAM, but that doesn’t appear to be working. SOOOO annoying. As an IT consultant, I have been managing domains for many clients for years and have never had this landslide of spam. I do not have any .xyz domains and buy through Bluehost and GoDaddy.
Genie says
I’ve blocked the entire Top TLD. Don’t care for it.
hwesterback says
Is it possible to create an Outlook rule that catches all mails from the domain .top? Something like this, will it work? *@*.top
Peter says
From what I have seen in my inbox, to block the .top domain you would have to use *@*.*.top
I tried that after getting hit with over 1100 spams over two days!
cclh says
Are any real sites using the .TOP domain? I’ve been getting lots of scams lately, and they all have .TOP domain sites. I’m looking for ways to set wildcards that block any message that has a .TOP link in it.
Bryan Henderson says
I’m getting a large volume of apparently legitimate advertising (I mean legitimate in that it’s not fraud – they’re really selling something) from this TLD. But I too am wondering if there’s any chance someone I want to hear from will use .TOP.
Bryan Henderson says
I wouldn’t call this spam. It is targeted advertising. Spam is sent indiscriminately so that each recipient has virtually no chance of being interested.
Jim says
.TOP and .XYZ are now in my sendmail ACCESS file rejected. All I have seen is crap from both. I get hit with so much that I added a fail2ban rule that after 2 denied attempts from the same IP, that IP goes in IPTABLES (firewall). Now my IPTABLES has 300+ entries for that chain in just 2 days, but my maillog is a third the size as previous days.
spamkiller@destroy.com says
All .TOP goes directly to my Trash. Made a filter for that. These .TOP suckers ae killing their own business.