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Yet another *nix admin blog

There have been many reported cases of a new scheme of scam involving generally a Chinese domain registration firm asking for people to register some domain names through them because “a third party” was trying to register them. Normally a dot.com domain owner who would receive an unsolicited email from those bogus companies claiming that someone else was trying to register some .cn of the same domain, so they wanted the company owner to register these domains first with them to “protect their trademarks”.

In the process, they earn fee for so-called service offered in disputing non-existent third party registration. In another word, they create demand triggered by fear.

Nevertheless, it make sense to register and park a .cn, if China is a targeted new operation ground for your company. This will block it being snapped by cybersquatters, competitors or even Chinese scammers mentioned earlier.
Here are the some samples communication of my attempt to lure them.

Note :-
Blue - Scammer
Amber - Me

Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 09:12:22 +0800
From: “connie”
To: “Kevin”
Subject: Yourdomain-Intellectual property rights

Dear principal,

We are a professional domain name registration service company in Hong Kong, which is mainly responsible for domain name registration and dispute. .We have something important need to confirm with you company.On the June 30, 2008, we received an application formally.One company named “Stershire International Holdings Ltd.” wanted to register following
domain names:
yourdomain.org.cn
yourdomain.net.cn
yourdomain.hk
yourdomain.co.in
yourdomain.co.jp
yourdomain.tw
yourdomain.com.tw
and Internet brand name:
Yourdomain
through our body.

After our initial examination,we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your name and trademark.These days we are dealing with it.If you don’t know this company,we doubt that they have other aims to register these domain names.Now we have not finished the registration of the Biofues company yet,if you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate department.In order to deal with this issue better,please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Connie Liu

Hong Kong Auditing Department Office:
Tel: (852)-8122 6293
Fax: (852)-8125 7328
Web: http://www.westtechnology.asia
Email: connie@westnet.hk.cn (working time)
conniel.asia@gmail.com (24 hours)

Dear Connie,
Thanks for the notification. We will proceed for registering all the domains below with relevant domain resellers.

Kevin

Dear Kevin ,

During our auditing process we found you own the trademark and “Yourdomain.com”,so you have the priority to register the domains.

If you want to register these domain names by yourself first, you can do according to our national registration procedure.
Following is the procedure, you can do follow these.
1. We send the dispute application form to you.
2. Fill in this form, seal and sign, then faxing or email to us.
3. We will stop their application.
4. We’ll send the invoice of payment to you.
5. You transfer the payment to us according to the Bank information on the invoice and fax the payment proof to us.
6. We will point these domain names to your main website within 48hours after getting the payment.

If you decide to register yourself,we can forward your information to our auditing department and apply a dispute application form for you.

Best Regards,

Connie Liu

Dear Connie,

Kevin

Sorry for the delay. What is the cost for filing a dispute application form? and service charge by your office?

Dear Kevin,

These are the official prices of the domain names and Internet brand name:

Domain namePrice/Per Year
yourdomain.org.cn 32.00USD
yourdomain.net.cn32.00USD
yourdomain.hk75.00USD
yourdomain.co.in 89.00USD
yourdomain.co.jp 220.00USD
yourdomain.tw 78.00USD
yourdomain.com.tw 78.00USD
Internet brand namePrice/Per Year
Yourdomain147.00USD

It does not cost to fill in the dispute application form. We do not charge any service fees. But it costs to dispute and register the domains.

Best Regards,

Connie Liu

See what I mean? These guys are full-timers. Their email response time is excellent!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.