Solicitation Disclaimers

Usually when you get a telemarketer phoning you all the time you always wonder where they get your phone number from as it can be pretty irritating. Online can be just as troublesome as you get spammed sometimes on e-mail addresses that you don’t ever use for your regular communication.

Just today I got this strange solicitation that tried to disguise itself as in a domain registration renewal fashion. The letter first had the following intro:

From – Sun Mar 29 08:09:29 2009
Return-path:
Received: from us-level-2.com (HELO HOST.US-LEVEL-2.COM) ([174.133.31.5])
Received: from nobody by HOST.US-LEVEL-2.COM with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:01:54 -0500
From: Domain Services
Subject: Domain Notification: ALAN YU This is your Final Notice of Domain

Attn: ALAN YU
As a courtesy reminder, we are sending you this notification for your Domain name search engine registration. This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration and save.

Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.

Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering. Search engine subscription includes domain name search engine submission. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below unless you accept this offer. Do not discard, this notice is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain name search engine listing so your customers can locate you on the web.

This Notice for: will expire on March 31,2009 Act today!

Then right on the bottom it has this disclaimer:

By accepting this offer, you agree not to hold DN liable for any part. Note that THIS IS NOT A BILL. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this offer. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the DN. This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. If you do not wish to receive further updates from DN send an email to wdsrv850@operamail.com to unsubscribe. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents for this letter is strictly prohibited. * 100% satisfaction guaranteed, you may request a refund within 30 days.

Now it was pretty apparent where they got this e-mail from as they simply just went with a bunch of e-mail accounts that were used in registering a domain name which is public information. What I have noticed recently is that so many of these spam offers have that disclaimer on how this is a solicitation.

That makes me wonder how disclaimers like that can stand if someone unexpectedly thought the e-mail was say a notice for a renewal from the registrar. While I guess that fine print disclaimer says it offers a 30 day refund, interesting fact is for this particular domain it doesn’t expire until 2011. Hence for my situation, if I was truly ignorant at first I can easily imagine paying for that fee thinking it was to renew the domain. Then since the domain is still active I would think everything was just fine as a result of “renewing” it.

And how many people actually read those fine prints right? Gotta watch your wallet.