I know this is a fairly well-documented scam, but I understand it’s impacted a member of the domain community, so I wanted to share it with you. The premise is that a hacker gains access to a person’s Facebook account and sends instant messages to that person’s friends asking for money.

While the premise behind the scam changes, it’s most often related to being stuck in a situation without money or access to funds. In many cases, the scammer claims that he was robbed at gun point, and all credit cards, cash, and mobile devices were taken. The scammer claims to immediately need cash via Western Union or some other difficult to track money transfer.

One reason I point this out is because many people who are connected on Facebook aren’t actually closely related in real life and may not know the person (and their diction) very well. In addition, they may not know where their “friends” travel and how often, so the scam may not seem unrealistic at first glance.

Keep your passwords secure, make sure they are different for different websites, and if someone reaches out to you, be sure to email or call the person making the request. Chances are good that it’s a scammer whose gained access to someone’s account without that person’s knowledge.

Before acquiring or hand registering a domain name, I usually do some research on the term in Google. I want to see how many results there are, how many advertisers there are, and whether companies use the term in domain names associated with the product.

When doing my search, I have the Google auto-fill menu enabled, and Google provides a useful list of related searches as I am typing. I sometimes use the results that show up in order to get domain registration ideas. For example, when typing in USB, I get the following options: USB Hub, USB Flash Drive, USB Cable, USB Wireless Adaptor…etc.

Oftentimes, the results are peripheral products that I didn’t knew existed, and sometimes the .com domain of the phrase/term is available to register. When Google first started using the auto fill feature, I had it turned off. However, I’ve since turned it back on and used it to mine domain names.