Found this information from XBIZ and thought it was important so I wanted to share it with you guys in case someone tries to scam you in the same way.
ASACP Fraud Alert: and How to Handle It
A webmaster in the UK received an email from joan@asacp.co.uk threatening him and his hosting company under the pretense of child pornography on his site. Thankfully this webmaster contacted ASACP directly to ask us about this. Know that ASACP does not own asacp.co.uk and never sends such emails to individuals or owners of suspected cp websites. We forward all confirmed reports of suspect CP directly to law enforcement and other international hotlines.
Tim Henning, VP Technology and Forensic Research, investigated this situation – the same as he would a report of suspect CP. What he learned is that asacp.co.uk is:
- Registered under the name “Jane Harman”; obviously whoever bought this domain knew about the recognition Congress person Jane Harman presented to ASACP for its Restricted to Adults – RTA label
- Registered with Dynadot, LLC t/a Dynadot (dynadot.com) in September 2010
- Hosted by Silicon Valley Web Hosting (svwh.net)
- Forwarding to asacp.org
- Plus, Tim obtained the list of other domains hosted on the same IP address. Since domains owned by the same person/organization are usually grouped under the same IP on servers, this may be an indicator of who is behind this illegal activity. Plus this information will help law enforcement with their investigation.
Since the information that leads to the identity of the real owner is protected by Dynadot.com and SVWH.net, within their billing records and server logs, ASACP had only two courses of action:
- Use a lawyer in order to obtain a subpoena to require that this registrar provide ASACP with this information which would have cost more money than ASACP could afford
- Go through one of our FBI contacts which as it turns out, because internet fraud is such a common crime, the FBI has partnered with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, IC3.gov as the national clearing house to handle these investigations – which is the route we decided to go
Since this criminal used Congress person Jane Harman’s name to register asacp.co.uk, ASACP has provided the results of our investigation and the IC3 case number to both her California and Washington staff. So we are expecting a speedier investigation.
We have also been working with the registrar and hosting company for asacp.co.uk to inform them of this matter and assist them with their own internal investigations. ASACP’s hosting company has also been contacted by us in order to place a referrer block on asacp.co.uk. All referred traffic from asacp.co.uk is now redirected to a forbidden page instead of asacp.org.
We hope this information helps you if you experience a similar situation. Also we could use your help, please contact Tim@asacp.org if you have received any correspondence from an email address using @asacp.co.uk.
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