Friday evening, as I am sitting in my living room relaxing, I get an email from an unknown website. The email, sourced from a site called ‘Website Launches’, states that my blog’s domain was spotted launching and that the company was tracking people finding it through the domain websitelaunches.com.

Initially, I thought, “What a peculiar email.” Is this a site that tracks newly registered domains to then list them for people to find/discover? The company name, logo, and slogan appear at the top of the email, stating the domain is “The Internet’s Discovery Engine.” Seemed odd to me. Over a decade and a half on the internet, and I have never come across this domain, nor have I heard of it. As I read through the remainder of the email, I noticed some suspicious factors riddled throughout:

• the domain source from the sender’s email does not exist,
• there appears to be a fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) button to claim my listing before the expiration (72 hrs),
• my website is currently ranked #100 in Portfolio & Personal with 2 upvotes and counting,
• there are five separate hyperlinks I can click to take me out of the email.

While completing both my Google Cybersecurity Certification and my Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) Certification there was an emphasis to better understand, identify, and avoid malicious emails. I learned about the different types of malicious emails (phishing, whaling, MitM, smishing, social engineering, etc.) and what each aims to achieve for the threat actor. For new emails I check the sender, parse the email to see if there’s any hyperlinks embedded, and make sure to not click on anything that might seem malicious. I view it the same as learning the guitar and adapting to new techniques; it’s a skill within the skillset of keeping myself secure.

These red flags led me to do my due diligence. Without interacting with any components of the email, I decided to do some personal research.

I started by analyzing the domain name and seeing if it genuinely existed. Searching “website launches domain” providees zero related results. I instead received articles, links, and YouTube videos detailing steps to launching your first website. Altering the search to provide more specific parameters proved to be of no success. View the results below.

And including the name of the individual listed in the email, “Taylor”, also provided no results. In fact, it assumed “Taylor” was in reference to Taylor Swift.

Beyond this search, I used an email validator to see what information could be provided by the sender. The results are posted below:

Using a registration lookup tool icann.org I was able to find further information regarding the domain registrar, when the site went live and when it was last updated. I found some suspicious information:

• Considering the website labels itself as the “Internet’s Discovery Engine”, the website was created less than a year ago - August 25th, 2025. A site that acts as a discovery engine should not be inaccessible from the general public.
• The mailing address contained in the Contact Information of the domain does not appear to match the mailing address listed at the bottom of the email. The email’s listed mailing address seems to be sourced in Lafayette, Colorado while the registrar info lists what appears to be in Hayes, Middlesex; a town located in west London, England.
• The registrant of the domain is an individual, rather than a company or organization. Seems odd if this site claims to be a constant resource on the web.

Overall, considering all elements of this email; time of receival, FOMO timeframes listed throughout, multitude of hyperlinks leading back to the websitelaunches.com domain, I flagged this email as potentially spam and/or malicious. It is always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to exposing oneself online.

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