information SPAM email inquiries for four letter dot coms that come from a gmail

[xynames]

All of the SPAM emails seem to be inquiries about one of my four letter dot coms. All seem to be phony SPAM phishing type inquiries sent to my email address on file under WhoIs.

All are sent from a gmail account that seems to have nothing to do with the signatory's name.

The text is always close to the same, with the actual four letter dot com in bold:

Hello,

I am interested in purchasing this domain **** . com and would appreciate hearing your asking price.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Peter G.


Hi,

I'm interested in your domain name **** . com

Is it available for sale? If so, what is the asking price?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Andy C.


I have responded to some of them, before figuring out what is going on, with a legitimate inquiry.

Others I write back with a hostile, Get lost spammer!

Nary a response. None.

What is the end game? What are they hoping to achieve?

 

[JB Lions]

All of the SPAM emails seem to be inquiries about one of my four letter dot coms. All seem to be phony SPAM phishing type inquiries sent to my email address on file under WhoIs.

All are sent from a gmail account that seems to have nothing to do with the signatory's name.

The text is always the same, with the actual four letter dot com in bold:

Hello,

I am interested in purchasing this domain **** . com and would appreciate hearing your asking price.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Peter G.


Hi,

I'm interested in your domain name **** . com

Is it available for sale? If so, what is the asking price?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Andy C.


I have responded to some of them, before figuring out what is going on, with a legitimate inquiry.

Others I write back with a hostile, Get lost spammer!

Nary a response. None.

What is the end game? What are they hoping to achieve?

That’s somebody here at NP, forgot who it was. But there are other threads about this one In particular.

 

[xynames]

Wait - so you mean the inquiries are legitimate? I've received many over the years and not one response back when I wrote. They do not seem legitimate to me.

 

[wwwulff]

Hi,

I'm interested in your domain name **** . com

Is it available for sale? If so, what is the asking price?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Andy C.

Got the same mail from Andy C today on one of my Atom listed names

 

[JB Lions]

Wait - so you mean the inquiries are legitimate? I've received many over the years and not one response back when I wrote. They do not seem legitimate to me.

I don’t think they’re legit, never understood the purpose, what’s going with them. Will try to find the old threads later

 

[xynames]

The fact that the signatory name changes constantly as well as the gmail, to me, indicates that it is an illegitimate inquiry. Not to mention that no one has ever responded to any email I have sent to the inquirer.

I think the best approach is to report the emails to SPAMCop.

Gotta discourage this kind of thing.

Ya follow?

 

[fka1080405]

I do not engage in this strategy myself but it is quite plausible that there is someone trying to identify domains undervalued by their owner and/or an owner in a stressed financial situation who is therefore open to giving someone a great deal.

For example, if someone obtained a list of target domains (e.g: LLLL.com domains) and then sent the same email to every owner they might get some great deals. I think the outreach is probably genuine but by virtue of you being a domain investor (who therefore knows how to value domains) you're not their target and they discard your responses.

If you'd like to test this theory, respond as if you are naive and do not understand the value of domains, e.g: offer to sell the domain for $50... and I am sure you will get a response.

No idea why the name varies, though. That's a mystery.

 

[draco]

My guess is they're hoping you're willing to sell it at a very cheap price. They could also be looking to flip it. You say you'll sell it for $500, they'll offer it for sale for $1000 and hope you don't sell it before they do.

 

[AEProgram]

Latest one comes from Peter Geldof [email protected]

 

[forge]

Latest one comes from Peter Geldof

Got this x2, on name I no longer own. Also been a problem in the past.

Don't encourage the spammer = don't reply!!!

 

[wwwulff]

Andy C is mentioned as a big player in this thread

https://www.namepros.com/threads/virtual-reality-domains-vr.823495/page-688#post-5297413

 

[johnn]

Got one email from him. He asked about one name that I sold 3 years ago LLLL.com

 

[Bannen]

I received one from 'Andy C' myself today:

Hi,
I'm interested in your domain name XXXXXXXXX.com
Is it available for sale? If so, what is the asking price?
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Andy C.

I think it's legit/not legit; legit in that if he stumbles across someone with a decent domain who replies to his spam and accepts a very lowball price, then he's a legit buyer (we ALL would be, if we found a nice domain that the owner would let go for very cheap, right?);

But not-legit in that he doesn't appear to be picking and choosing names he's interested in buying; looks like he's just mining every public whois he can find, on a .com, and indiscriminately mass emailing those owners, using a few boilerplate templates he has. Obviously using an 'If I email 10,000 random domain owners, maybe one of them will sell me a good domain for cheap' tactic. So the fact that you/I receive one of his emails doesn't mean he's interested or even that he knows his mailer program sent us an email. Likely all he sees are any replies.

My domain, by the way, is not an LLLL; it's a three word domain, and I've had a substantial website built on it for a dozen years. So yeah, I think he's using an automated emailer, sending emails indiscriminately to public whois addies.

 

[DN_Hunter]

I've gotten the exact same worded emails on a few of my 4-letter .com names over the last few days. They go to my JUNK folder, and I empty the JUNK folder several times per day.

NOTE: I can't remember all of the different names they used, but they all used the same template. I do remember a couple of emails had the name "geldof" -- as I remember singing in my head "tell me why, I don't like Mondays..."

 

[scithe]

I got one last week from Peter and one from Andy today. Both are inquiries about the same domain, which has an Atom landing page. What's odd is they have my e-mail address but I have whois protection so I am not sure how they were able to get that.

 

[johnn]

Just got another email asking the same domain name from Jeff

[email protected]​

 

[Altetra]

This emails could be a good way to find out more about their owners!
Maybe they are watching our domains to see are we dead or alive, will we drop them or not etc.
I had similar spam offers on my domains from Gmail accounts, most of times I just ignore them or reply with nonsense, never got replies back from them, it's not excluded that this are AI inquires.
Based on all inquires till today, for me is no longer hard to detect who is who, I even insulted many end users when I got low ball offer, because I know what my domains are worth and I m not gonna play with them.

 

[AEProgram]

I think these emails are part of a major spam operation.

They are using gmail which has a high inboxing rate. However, first they have to fool gmail into thinking they are not spammers. When gmail sees people replying to their email, which most domain owners that get these emails do, it tells gmail that the sender is in a normal business.

They probably use thousands of gmail accounts and when they warmed it enough, they destroy it by blasting spam to a few million people. Since its gmail and by then most ISP's whitelisted it because it showed real communication, their spam has a high inboxing rate.

With the right offer, this operation could make a few million dollars each time they do this.

I left out some critical details because I don't want someone seeing this to get any ideas, but I shared just enough so the average person would have no clue what it really takes.

 

[damance]

I think these emails are part of a major spam operation.

They are using gmail which has a high inboxing rate. However, first they have to fool gmail into thinking they are not spammers. When gmail sees people replying to their email, which most domain owners that get these emails do, it tells gmail that the sender is in a normal business.

They probably use thousands of gmail accounts and when they warmed it enough, they destroy it by blasting spam to a few million people. Since its gmail and by then most ISP's whitelisted it because it showed real communication, their spam has a high inboxing rate.

With the right offer, this operation could make a few million dollars each time they do this.

I left out some critical details because I don't want someone seeing this to get any ideas, but I shared just enough so the average person would have no clue what it really takes.

yoi have milion better and faster ways to warmup your account then sending these how much emails

 

[scithe]

I just find it obnoxious and insulting to e-mail me asking if my domain is for sale when the domain is a landing page with a BIN price.