Recently, I received an email addressed to my whois registered email address for my Sciencebase.com site, here’s what it said:

“Greetings

I’m Mike [name changed], a software developer from Canada. I see that you are associated with sciencebase.com and that your website appears for the search term “Racquets”. I thought that you might like to know that I am seeking a buyer for my domain name Racquetthingy.com [domain changed].

You will find that Google will boost your ranking for “Racquets” once you start adding content to the website. Racquetthingy.com is a very brandable name for this industry and owning such a name will tell your competitors, current and future customers, partners and/or investors that you are a major player in this field. Even if you just keep this domain for future use or sale, it will solidify your online presence.

Because I am looking to clear out my domain names, I would be willing to offer you Racquetthingy.com at a good price. My asking price is only $250 US, although I will consider all reasonable offers. If you would like to consider acquiring this domain name, or would like more information, please reply to this message.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message. I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

Mike”

$250 o.n.o doesn’t sound too expensive for a domain, but funnily enough it’s not even ranking number 1 for the word racquetthingy, which isn’t a good sign. Moreover, I’m not sure why it would help with rankings for the distinct keyword racquets either.

But, this is obviously the very latest in technological scams. First off, I think I once wrote a blog post about playing with two tennis racquets, which is probably the page for which I’m ranking, but Mike presumably didn’t even bother to check out the site to see. Secondly, as I’m not in the racquets racket, buying the domain would be of no benefit to me at all. Thirdly, I assume his reference to boosting my rank in Google would be through links to Sciencebase.com…although I’m not sure. Mike is just fishing, or is that phishing?

Be warned, if you get an email like this, it’s either a scam or pure and simple spam. Bin it right away.