Received email with an offer for my domain name.

Then I received another. Is this a scam?

[dataguy]

Two days ago I received an email from an individual offering to buy one of my domain names for 75% of its appraised value, and then they offered a list of appraisal services that they suggested I use if I didn't already have an appraisal.

Whoopie! It wasn't that good of a domain name anyway, and I'm sure I'll get an appraisal value of several multiples of what the name is worth to me. All is good, I picked and payed for an appraisal from one of the names in the list and responded to the email saying that I would have a price in a few days.

Everything is fine, the only suspicious thing is that I have never received an offer like this before where the potential buyer offered a percentage of appraised value, and the email seemed a little bit like a form email. Oh well.

Today I received another email, for another name that I own. This is the same form mail, except with a different domain name (listed again in upper case as if it was copied directly from a whois database). The potential buyer is using a different name and different (free) email service.

Have I been had? I used the cheapest appraisal service on the list, which is the only one I didn't recognize. If only 10 percent of the domain owners used this appraisal service and the potential buyer was benefiting by sending customers to this service, a 10% closing rate would be phenomenal.

Has anyone else here seen such an offer before?

[IanTurner]

I had two of those emails too, I didn't respond because anything from a free email address has to be considered suspect and the names wouldn't have raised to cost of the appraisal.

[maximillianos]

I just got one of these as well. They offered 65% of the appraised value. Then referred me to 3 different appraisal sites (all that charge a fee).

I just marked the e-mail as SPAM.

[coopster]

There is a lengthy discussion in the Supporters Forum on this same topic. It is indeed spam, and likely being relayed, at least it is/was in my case. I took a moment to send an abuse message off to the shared hosting provider who promptly replied that the issue had been addressed ... for that compromised server at least. One down, one billion to go.