Re: Inquiries to Acquire IPs

[Seth Mattinen <sethm () rollernet us>]

On 7/2/2010 11:46, Crist Clark wrote:
> We got a strange and out of the blue inquiry from someone
> wishing to pay us for a chunk of our ARIN allocation,
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > According to Whois data, you company owns the following
> > IP address space:
> >
> > 206.220.220.0/24
> >
> > We would like to get this block of IP addresses for our business
> > needs. Is it possible to assign this block for our company with 
> > PI (Provider Independent) or PA (Provider Assigned) status?
> >
> > We ready to pay about $5,000 for the net block itself
> > and all related procedures.
> >
> > Would you be interested in such an offer? The amount of compensation 
> > is subject to negotiation.
>
> We're not interested, mostly because we use our allocation,
> but also because I think this is not allowed by our agreement
> with ARIN. Seems a bit fishy.
>
> I should add the sender identified himself and his company
> clearly. It wasn't from some free mail account. (Although it
> could of course be spoofed.)
>
> Is this a new thing? IP speculation as we come upon free pool
> depletion? A front for spammers?


Not a new thing. Usually they're looking for ways around ARIN's rules or
they just want to "borrow" your IP space. In the latter case they'll
just use the block for some limited period of time (such as for sending
spam) and return it to you when they're done.

~Seth