Did you know there are over 1,000 domain extensions that you can purchase? A domain extension is the suffix that follows the domain name in a web address; the most widely used is “.com.” Anyone can go to a website like GoDaddy and purchase a URL with a domain extension, even if you already own the “.com.” For example, if you own homewatchbusiness.com, that doesn’t stop someone from purchasing homewatchbusiness.biz. homewatchbusiness.us, and so on. Most businesses only buy some of the extensions as they can be expensive.
Background
I own a digital marketing/web design company called NetOne360, and the URL is netone360.com. Someone or a group purchased various domain extensions with my URL, such as netone360.us. and netone360.sites. Then they pretended to be an employee of NetOne360 then trolled the internet looking for individuals looking for web designer positions and contacted them, offering them a job and scamming them out of money.
This can happen to any business. Anyone can use your company to pretend to be an employee of your company to scam people out of money. They can scam job candidates, homeowners looking for home watch services, and I am sure there are many others. Just be aware.
The Story
Here is a more in depth story of what happened to my company.
Fort Myers business owner warns of job scam using his company’s name
