Registry of the national domain of Switzerland .CH has addressed its customers. The reason is increasingly frequent attempts of fraud with Swiss domain names.
Until recently SWITCH simultaneously performed functions of one of the biggest domain registrars in the country. However, in 2015 the registry will close this business. This means that all clients that have registered domains directly at SWITCH will have to transfer them to some other registrars.
Scammers are trying to take advantage of this situation. Many domain administrators in the .CH domain zone started to receive messages that they have to transfer their domain names urgently, otherwise they supposedly will lose their domains. To do that clients are invited to follow a link and then enter their account name and password. In some cases clients are required to pay for the re-registration procedure.
SWITCH notifies all of its customers that it has nothing to do with these messages and calls for vigilance. Official emails concerning the necessity to transfer domains will be sent to clients from January of the following year. There is no extra urgency in this issue, since the notification will be sent out three months prior the date of the transfer. The procedure is absolutely free. These messages are most likely fraudulent. You can lose your domain by entering account name and password on the falsified page rather then by being late with the transfer.
