Just in case there's others out there who might be alarmed, as I was, here's an email I got this morning;
We are a Global Domain Name Registration Center in Hong Kong, mainly dealing
with domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights
protection. On Jan 21,2010 we received a formal application from a local
company of your country who is applying to register some domain names with
the keyword
(our domain) as the keyword. After investigation,we find
that you are the original user of the keyword. Such similar domain cases may
involve your trademark and company name,and may cause website confusion and
conflicts. For a responsible attitude, we inform you here and ask for your
opinion. If you don\'t mind,we will finish registration for the third
Look forward to your reply.
Tel: +852-31757931(ext8001)
I thought it might be dodgy, but perhaps not, so I replied;
Re your message my opinion is that anyone trying to register our name is
wasting their time and money, that they only intend some form of criminal
extortion which will achieve nothing, and that if you help them you are a
So I hope that you reject the application.
Please advise who is trying to steal our domain name. There is no question
of "confidentiality". They are not entitled to any; they are just trying to
steal the name and we wish to take the appropriate action against them. If
you are a genuine business you would assist us with that.
"Janet" responded;
Thank you for your reply.I can understand your concerns. As for the information of the third party, i am sorry that we can not release the information of the third party to you, because we are a service company and we have the duty to protect our clients’ commercial secret,what is more, we accept the third party’s application on line and it doesn't need too much information on one company to register the domain names i hope you can understand.Now, the aforementioned third party is applying the following domain names and internet keyword:
Domain names as below:
www.(our domain).net
www.(our domain).cn
www.(our domain).hk
www.(our domain).net.uk
www.(our domain).org.uk
www.(our domain).us
www.(our domain).asia
Internet keyword
(our domain)
Once you would like to protect or preserve them by registering ahead due to the importance, one valid application form will be sent to start your prior registration. Or we are going to approve the application from the third party if your company does not lay claim to these domains. Please let us know if there is anything more we might be of assistance. Thanks very much and your early reply will be appreciated.
An introduction of Internet Keyword is enclosed for your review.
Best Regards
Janet Carl
By then I had done some research on Google, and felt moved to reply;
Take your dirty little scam to someone else. Two minutes research on Google shows that the “Chinese Internet Keyword” scam is becoming as well known as Nigerian internet scams.
I'm still waiting for Janet's response.
PS A quick check with 123-reg shows that www.apidnr is available with any one of 20+ suffixes, other than .com. and .com.hk. Tempting, isn't it?