Domain Direct Billing System Improvement

In this day and age of escalating identity theft, we are taking further steps to protect our customers.  Identity theft can be very hard to determine by online providers, as those who have your information can easily appear exactly the same as you would online.

Using our over ten years of experience, we have revamped our fraud detection system to better protect you.  The only difference that may impact our customers will be a change in the way we handle the billing email contact.  From this time forward, our system will not accept billing contact email addresses using a free email provider.

Many criminal organizations use networks of free email addresses to launder stolen identities to make them appear legitimate.  We believe that we have not only a responsibility to our business interests, but a moral obligation to ensure that our system thwarts these efforts by every means possible.

We will continue to ensure our system remains a place where this type of unethical activity cannot flourish.

Comments

[Todd]

WOW, this raises so many questions I don't even know where to start.

First of all I don't know of a single institution that requires you to uses a paid e-mail service. Somehow they are able to provide secure billing. Institutions I use which will bill using a "free" email service include the following:
--My Bank
--QWest
--ATT Wireless
--PayPal
--EBay
--My mortgage company

Next, how would this work for some e-mail providers?
--I used to pay AOL, now I still have a feee e-mail account. Can your system tell the difference?

--GWiz mail for domains is free. I pay for the domain I use. Does that count as a a pay for service e-mail or not?

--If I switch a domain from GWiz mail to a paid provider does it then become a legit e-mail for billing?

--How about Yahoo? I can use a free service or pay a proce for premium services. If I pay then can I use the account for billing? How can Tucows tell the difference?

--What about a student accout? As long as you are a student you can have an account at your school. Since you don't pay for it does it count as a free email provider?

What do I use for a billing account when signing up for Tucows?

--During the time I sign up I may only have a free e-mail account. What do I enter for "billing e-mail" before my account is activated? Do I need to pay for another e-mail account in order to sign up?

Is this just an effort to push people to buy e-mail accounts?

--Tucows sells domain names. Do people now need to pay for an e-mail service before buying a domain name through Tucows?

--What happens to all the accounts which are currently using "free e-mail" for billing. Will these customers be forced to pay for an e-mail service?

[Ross]

Most of the credit card fraud we see comes from bad actors using stolen cards and throwaway addresses from Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail. So, we've compiled a list of all of the email providers that these scammers use and we've blocked them. All blocked transactions are reviewed manually and we pick out any false positives to make sure that legitimate purchasers don't get caught up in this wide net.

We have dozens of such measures in place already (i.e. regional blacklists, IP blacklists, velocity checking, etc.) but given the nature of this particular change, we thought it was best to be transparent about it.

Renewal transactions are scored using different criteria and should remain unaffected by this move.