ICANN has issued a statement concerning an attempted fraud on the part of several online entities. These entities pretended to be registrars and demanded that individuals and organizations interested in registering domain name in gTLDs, have to buy a special certificate that supposedly guarantees protection of registered names.
In this regard, ICANN states that these “certificates” are fraudulent and the use of ICANN logo was absolutely illegal. The corporation does not issue such documents and does not have direct financial relations with registrants of domain names. All legal entities and individuals that are interested in registration of domains should make sure that the registrar they are dealing with is accredited by ICANN (a list of all accredited registrars can be found on corporation’s webpage). Individuals and organizations that faced attempted fraud should immediately report to ICANN via email: compliance@icann.org.
