"Internet Keyword" Scam
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: +852-31757931(ext8001) Fax: +852-31757932 Email: [email protected] Website: www.apidnr.com.hk 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. 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 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. 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? |
On the downside, you've confirmed a live email address. Expect more, much more. Best to block or ignore these.
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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. |
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! |
I got all the "likely" ones and set them to point at my primary domain. It stopped the squatters and scammers. |
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." |
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... :cool: |
For a personal website, you don't care. I'm a UK company so .co.uk is exactly appropriate, and anything else would be silly. |
anything else would be silly |
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