Australian registrars investigated for sending out unsolicited messages

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking action against two domain name registrars that have been sending out unsolicited communications to its business clients. According to ACCC, the notices sent by the two registrars looked like renewal invoices for their clients’ domain names, while, in reality, they were invoices for the registration of a new domain name (similar to the ones the companies already had). Between November 2015 and April 2017, there were around 300 000 such notices sent to business registrants, many of which ended up paying, unwittingly, for a new domain name that they might have not needed or wanted.