Research from name.com, Scam?

[mukti]

Today I received a letter

From [email protected]

Dear ...............

name.com has commissioned Millward Brown, a market research firm, to conduct a short study on our behalf. Our goal is to better understand your experience with the domain name renewal process, and your opinions and feedback will be used to help us improve your experience with future renewals. Your answers will be reported in aggregate with those of other respondents.

We realize your time is valuable and this survey will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. In exchange for your time, you will receive a $15 gift certificate to Amazon.com for completing this survey by August 15, 2010.

Please click on the link below or cut and paste the link into your browser to start the survey. Thank you in advance for taking a moment to share your opinions with us.

-


Need Help Completing This Study?
If you have any questions about this study, or problems entering the site, please reply to this email or
email us at [email protected]

If you do not wish to participate in this research, please click on the opt-out link below.

Millward Brown Remove List



How Millward Brown Helps Protect Your Privacy
Millward Brown is committed to protecting your privacy.

For Millward Brown's privacy policy, please click on the below link:
Millward Brown IntelliQuest | Survey Privacy Policy


Millward Brown
3333 Warrenville Road
Suite 400
Lisle, Illinois 60532

 

[Domagon]

Might be legit, might not? Many companies contract out surveys to outside parties ...

In my view, the best policy is to *ignore all* email surveys.

The few companies that have a clue, don't do email surveys at all, but rather do so through their secure area of their website using their own in-house survey system that's hosted within their domain.

Ron

 

[tricolorro]

Did you contact anyone at Name.com?

 

[bmugford]

I received the exact same email.

Brad

 

[Sparhawke]

I would go to Name.com and find out if there is anywhere there in an official capacity that can verify the emails authenticity.

This will be the best way of verifying it, I never open unsolicited emails because you simply do not know, and for $15 are you really going to take that risk?

Much better for these companies to do is have an opt in on their site...instead of sending out spam constantly that confuses people.

 

[Duey23]

Might be legit, might not? Many companies contract out surveys to outside parties ...

In my view, the best policy is to *ignore all* email surveys.

The few companies that have a clue, don't do email surveys at all, but rather do so through their secure area of their website using their own in-house survey system that's hosted within their domain.

Ron

Hello:

In fact Millward Brown is a real company who has been contracted to conduct the survey for name.com.

Not all website companies/clients have the internal analytical experience in consumer research or the time/staff to do it and they go to outside firms to do it. If they do have in-house survey systems they may not be complex enough to handle the research they want to conduct (Most DIY softwares lack in those areas) or they want to ask more questions than you'd be patient for in a pop-up survey or quick response survey when you're browsing through their site.

I appreciate the comment about ignoring all email surveys as there are hundreds and hundreds of spammers out there as well as scam-artists posing as real Market Research companies, but if you click through on the invite or do a quick search for the domain, you'll see the legitimacy of the research.

I realize it's easier believed than proven. It's always hard to disprove a negative. I used to work for Millward Brown and still actually work for the group of companies they are part of.

Hopefully you'll take the survey. If not, we respect your wishes not to but hope you don't always throw the baby out with the bathwater.

-Brian LoCicero

---------- Post added at 04:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 PM ----------

I would go to Name.com and find out if there is anywhere there in an official capacity that can verify the emails authenticity.

This will be the best way of verifying it, I never open unsolicited emails because you simply do not know, and for $15 are you really going to take that risk?

Much better for these companies to do is have an opt in on their site...instead of sending out spam constantly that confuses people.

I just wanted to touch on these points because they are all very good ones.

"verify the email's authenticity" sadly clients usually don't have explicit rules there and because they may contract a variety of suppliers for Market Research, they are usually nebulous. We work with each client asking THEM to be the ones to send the emails to help with the authenticity, however since we require a unique URL to each respondent (keeps people from filling out the same survey 10 times to cash-in OR send the URL around to a non-intended audience), some of them won't or don't have the capacity to do so. You'd be surprised how many clients do not even handle their own bulk mail and send it out to 3rd party companies.

"opt-in on the site" - Most have this in their standard terms & agreements when you join. Since Market Research (the real stuff) isn't selling/marketing the agreements usually are for 3rd party companies to solicit. We ask and try to educate all of our clients to change their agreements to include specifically market research.

Couldn't agree with you more about not sending out the spam. As mentioned we'd prefer our clients to send you the invite to the survey, but most just can't or won't or use a 3rd party that complicates the matter all together. From a simple response rate metric, you're more likely to respond to an email from them, than us. This means that if we have to send it we end up sending to far more people that we should have to (further bugging more people).

Ultimately this is an education process for a lot of our clients who want to survey their membership or participants.

-Brian

 

[Name Trader]

I wouldn't trust this survey since Millward Brown (who I've never heard of) are not even using their own website for this survey.

 

[nielsencl]

I think the fact that the email is legit has been established, no?

Name.com needs to hire me, or someone like me, to help them avoid missteps like this one. If the email could not have been sent from Name.com, then they should have notified customers that it would be coming from a third party. I hope THEY are not clicking on links in emails from people they don't know...!

 

[Domagon]

I think the fact that the email is legit has been established, no?

Maybe.

Even if the email is real, which still isn't totally clear, there's nothing to stop a phisher from sending out a similar looking email.

Name.com sending out an announcement beforehand about an upcoming survey may help, but is a double-edge sword in it may entice phishers.

On a related topic, how trustworthy are 3rd party survey companies? Does answering 3rd party email surveys result in one getting many more email surveys?

Ron

 

[nielsencl]

Whois Record

Registrant: Millward Brown
535 East Diehl Road
Naperville, IL 60563 US

Domain Name: KTRMR-EMAIL.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Millward Brown
535 East Diehl Road
Naperville, IL 60563 US
630-505-0066 fax: 123 123 1234

and

Millward Brown, Inc.
Phone: (630) 505-0066. Fax: (630) 505-0077. Email: [email protected]. URL: Home

As our new member Duey23 says it's clear to me that despite the warning flags, this is a real survey from a real company that also has a few things to learn about marketing and branding for itself... I too, had never heard of them befor this post, and I've been around for quite a while.

Opinions are great, but taking a few minutes to do a little research for someone that has a question will help them and everyone else to know what the facts are...

 

[Domagon]

It may be legit - still don't know ... but anyways, to play devil's advocate for a moment, it's easily conceivable for a phisher to register a domain with another company's info.

KTRMR-EMAIL.COM doesn't resolve to a website.

But even if it did resolve to a website, how could one really be sure it's associated with Millwardbrown.com? It's a cinch for a phisher to do a cloak redirect or even aliasing a domain to the legit website.

Most users aren't aware that web, email, etc can be associated with different servers operated by totally different people - so even if the domain resolves to the correct site, doesn't mean the email goes there - it could be going to the phisher. And this isn't even getting into the issues of forged headers and confusing similar links often found in phishing emails.

In short, trusting email alone, especially when coming from an unfamiliar source, is asking for trouble.

Ron

 

[lll]

I received this same email but from Register.com (who I had 1 name with ONCE that I sold for mid xxx)
but anyway they have been calling me nonstop, I called them back and when the lady said "hello, Register.com" I hung up :lol:

but I would not mind a free $15 to amazon so I might pick up next time.

 

[nielsencl]

If anyone still doubts that Millward Brown owns the domain I suggest that you give them a call. The phone number in the whois record for KTRMR-EMAIL.COM matches that of the Millward Brown web site. That was enough for me.

But I agree that just having the phone number in the WHOIS record is not proof. But at this time I am satisfied, so someone else that still has doubts can make the call and let all of us know what they find out...!

 

[Name Trader]

I'd want confirmation from Millward Brown or Name.com that this is an official survey being conducted on their behalf before participating in the survey. But I'm not the one to call them from Asia. I cannot think of any reason why they'd want to use some obscure address without a site, rather than their own website. Still seem's a tad fishy to me.

 

[name.com]

Hi guys,

Apologies for any confusion. This survey is in fact legit, it is part of a deal we did with VeriSign. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at lesley[at]name.com.

Best regards,
Lesley Yarbrough
Community Manager
Name.com

 

[tricolorro]

Hi guys,

Apologies for any confusion. This survey is in fact legit, it is part of a deal we did with VeriSign. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at lesley[at]name.com.

Best regards,
Lesley Yarbrough
Community Manager
Name.com

Lesley,

Most of us have learned not to click on links in unsolicited emails even those seeming to come from trusted sources.

If I saw an email address like this one in the Millward Brown email,
[email protected] ,there is no way I would click on it.

It looks like the typical phishing email that has Millward Brown in it to establish legitimacy but really goes to ktrmr-email.com and what the hell is that?

Since Name.com is using an outside company to conduct the survey, I think a lot of unnecessary angst could have been avoided.

The email survey invite should instruct the recipient to log into their Name.com account where a link to the Millward Brown survey would be found.

Your survey participation rate would probably go up as well.

 

[name.com]

Lesley,

Most of us have learned not to click on links in unsolicited emails even those seeming to come from trusted sources.

If I saw an email address like this one in the Millward Brown email,
[email protected] ,there is no way I would click on it.

It looks like the typical phishing email that has Millward Brown in it to establish legitimacy but really goes to ktrmr-email.com and what the hell is that?

Since Name.com is using an outside company to conduct the survey, I think a lot of unnecessary angst could have been avoided.

The email survey invite should instruct the recipient to log into their Name.com account where a link to the Millward Brown survey would be found.

Your survey participation rate would probably go up as well.

tricolorro,

You make some excellent points. I can say we've learned a lot with this survey and next time we know we should be more involved with the creation process so that we can avoid any future confusion around surveys that are sent to our customers. Many thanks for the feedback!

Cheers,
Lesley

 

[domainbartender]

Lesley, do you know when/where they will be sending us the codes for the Amazon Certificates? I already took part in the survey. Thanks.

 

[name.com]

Lesley, do you know when/where they will be sending us the codes for the Amazon Certificates? I already took part in the survey. Thanks.

Sorry I missed this. We were told that the Amazon gift cards would be sent out by 9/10, so you should receive them sometime after that. If you don't receive yours within a reasonable amount of time, please let us know.

Cheers,
Lesley