parish.uk scam?

[JMI]

I just wondered if anyone had heard of this service?

A friend of mine had an email out of the blue saying they needed to renew their business listing on a subdomain e.g. https://sidmouth.parish.uk/ It's obviously Gov branded and looks very legit on the root domain parish.uk. Although it looks like a simple design it is an extremely slick operation and appears to be (look) very credible.

On asking their support team for more information like stats etc I got some very suspicious replies and listing did appear in google but were generally quite poor rankings.

As I say the content and branding look 99% "gov/council" legitimate, perhaps it is just me

Finally if it is legit it does raises questions about using tax payers money to develop and run such services.

 

[HelmutsHelmuts is verified member.]

Yup, a scam.

https://meppershall-pc.gov.uk/uncategorized/scam-alert-parish-uk/

https://www.local.gov.uk/about/contact-us

humm... probably [email protected] would be much more effective in this case..

@Kieren, could this be the case? .. there was something related to the DNS security services Nomi are providing in the UK.. does the Nominet have the rights to shut down a domain before even a police report? .. would such a reference as https://meppershall-pc.gov.uk/uncategorized/scam-alert-parish-uk/ be enough to act? tx

 

[webberwebber is verified member.]

does the Nominet have the rights to shut down a domain before even a police report?

Technically yes, but it most definitely does not do that unilaterally.
Nominet currently has a voluntary agreement with select governmental agencies to suspend domains reported by these agencies to be involved in scam or other illegal activity.

On the same topic, there is currently a public consultation on the Computer Misuse Act which could be updated to force registries like Nominet to seize or even blacklist domain names. This was discussed at the last UKRAC meeting and Nominet formally responded to the consultations. I would encourage other members also to submit their views.

Nominet Cyber is entirely distinct from the registry business and it is a commercial activity serving large clients like governments through PDSN (Protective DNS or blocking of threats at DNS level)

So, back to the original topic, the best thing would be to report the website to Action Fraud.

 

[micron]

Yeah, I’ve come across that site before; it gives off “official” vibes at first glance with the design and domain structure. But once you dig a bit deeper, like you did, the red flags start to show. The way they approach people out of the blue and then act cagey when asked for actual data is sketchy. Also agree the SEO seems weak for something that’s supposedly a public resource. Even if it’s not outright malicious, it feels like it’s intentionally made to look more legit than it is, which always raises questions. One to be cautious with.