The email Confidence
and what you can do
A common method for Scammers is to register a domain, use email accounts for that domain to communicate with victims. The domain then "social engineers" the victims into thinking it's more legitimate since the email is not from a free email service (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, etc..) and appears to be an email from a legit business.
An MX record is the mail exchang record, tells you what service the email is routed through essentially, and who you should report the domain to to be reviewed and suspended if appropriate.
The following collected from web research on Hosted Domains:
What are Hosted Domains? The service allows for domain registrations, web hosting for a website and hosting of email accounts for a domain on the servers and/or backend infrastructure of an email service provider. Hosted domains are usually offered as part of broader offerings of online office suites or cloud based software as a service.
Some example providers of hosted domains:
- Google Apps: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
- Google Apps Domain Registration: https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new
- Yahoo! Small Business: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email
- Yahoo! Small Business Domain Registration: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains
- Microsoft Office Live Small Business:: http://smallbusiness.officelive.com
- Microsoft Office Live Small Business Domain Registration: http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/domain-registration
Look at the MX (Mail exchanger) record of a domain (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record) as part of the DNS (domain name system) that specifies how email for a specific domain is routed with SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). Commonly used tools to research DNS and MX records for a domain: