[registrars] WARNING: FRAUDULENT CREDIT CARDS USED FOR REGISTRATIONS.

[Robert F. Connelly]

Dear Registrars:  We've had a flock of fraudulent registrations in the last 72 hours.  A telltale symptom in these cases is that they are all for alleged registrants in the U.S., but the telephone country codes are *not* "1".  

Except for the country codes, several phone numbers are correct.  One lady in Georgia says she had a similar hit a month or so ago.  The registered domain name was used to put up a porn site;-}  

These fraudulent registrations are not like the ones we had in years past where they were for 5 to 10 years.  At that time, conventual wisdom was that the scoundrel was checking to see how good the credit card was so he or she could make a large purchase using the stolen card.   It may be that the current intent is to use these registrations to create nuisance web sites.

I have contacted LogicBoxes and asked that they put in a sanity check for the country code.  It may take a bit to check all possible valid country codes, but it should not take a heroic effort to be sure that "1" is used for the USA.

More when I know more.

Regards, BobC