"Internet Keyword" Scam

[Capot]

Just in case there's others out there who might be alarmed, as I was, here's an email I got this morning;

Dear CEO or Manager,

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

company.

Look forward to your reply.

Best Regards,

Janet.Carl

Tel: [phone](ext8001)

Fax: [phone]

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.apidnr.com.hk

I thought it might be dodgy, but perhaps not, so I replied;

Dear Janet,

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

part of that.

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?

[Sprogget]

On the downside, you've confirmed a live email address. Expect more, much more. Best to block or ignore these.

[Keef]

The .net and .org.uk you can register yourself, very easily. Just open an account with UKReg.com or similar, and for about £6/2 years you can register domains like a good'un.

They will also provide forwarding for you, so the domains can be "live".

I got all the "likely" ones and set them to point at my primary domain. It stopped the squatters and scammers.

[Nikai]

Busy scammers

Just received one of these today from 'Diane Mill at www.apidnr.com.hk. Looks like there are some busy little scammers out there!

Good to see all the postings about the different forms they take that you can find from a Google search. Even though it looks suspicious from the beginning, theres always that shred of doubt when you see they have a fairly tidy website!

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I got all the "likely" ones and set them to point at my primary domain. It stopped the squatters and scammers.

I don't bother. I use .co.uk, I haven't bothered to register any others, and I ignore all spams and scams. I can't even be bothered to check whether anyone else has registered any of the others.

[Keef]

It depends what you're doing, Gertrude. For a personal website, you don't care.

For something more serious, you want the right result even if folks miss off the .uk (or add it in error), and you don't want some virus-site pretending to be you. For £10 a year (3 additional registrations) it was worth it for what I was doing.

Sometimes, people phone and ask "has your website got a .uk on the end, or not?" I reply "Yes <pause> it will work the same with or without."

[mixture]

Capot,

I think you've learnt your lesson, just ignore dodgy sounding emails, just like the 419 scams... . just like the one I received yesterday from the "FBI" insisting I should liase with their "Nigerian Office" over some "important matter"

Let's face it, when it comes to IP rights, you would more likely be receiving a heavily worded letter from a recognised firm of solicitors through the post rather than a poorly written email out of the blue...

[Gertrude the Wombat]

For a personal website, you don't care.

It's a small company web site via which I find most of my work (with a free public service running on it for corporate image advertising).

I'm a UK company so .co.uk is exactly appropriate, and anything else would be silly.

[airborne_artist]

anything else would be silly

But not very expensive to buy/maintain. Chasing someone off who got hold of yourname.com or similar could cost you stupid amounts of time/lawyers' fees. You could hoover up all that could do you any harm for less than £100 a year.