Have you ever received an email from a supposed “legitimate” domain name registration company claiming there is a certain so-and-so company trying to register a country (or region) specific domain name that has your trademark in it? And this domain registrar is writing to you to inform you of the deal, so you can veto on the deal, if you choose to do so.

STOP! Do not even try to ever try to register anything with them. It is a scam! I know this because I had my fair share of experiences in a number of occassions over the past six months.

Their sample letter can look something like this:

Dear CEO,

Hello!

We are a domain name registration service company in asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Jul 21,2008, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinei international  ltd” applied for the internet trademark :

” W8hostnetwork”

and the domain names:

“w8hostnetwork.asia, w8hostnetwork.tw, w8hostnetwork.com.tw, w8hostnetwork.net.cn, w8hostnetwork.org.cn, w8hostnetwork.hk” etc…

These days we are dealing with it, After our initial examination, we found that the internet trademark and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. hope to get the affirmation of your company because that may relate to your intellectual property on internet. Now we have not finished the registration of  Xinei international ltd yet, in order to deal with this issue better, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.Have a nice day!

Best Regards,
Linda

Sponsoring Registrar:
SK Net Service Company Ltd
Tel:00852- 30759838
Fax:00852-31771510  ;  00852-31771520
E-mail:  linda@cnsknet.cn
Website:  www.sknetservice.hk

Sounds fair enough. A company, Xinei International Ltd, is trying to register a list of domain names using our domain, “w8hostnetwork”. The question is, why would Xinei would want our domain name?

Of course, when someone wants to buy your domain, the first thing you need to do is check out the company, but a quick check in google holds no record for “Xinei International Ltd”. Sounds fishy. In this case, neither does the domain registrar’s website ever existed.

How to detect it?

A closer inspection on their email reveals a copy that is poorly written and has so many inconsistencies. For example:

On the Jul 21,2008, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinei international  ltd” applied for the internet trademark :

There is no mention of the other company’s website, nor business address. If they have chose to expose the other company’s trade name, then why not their website or business location? Then we also have inconsistent registrar domain name and email in the signature:

E-mail:  linda@cnsknet.cn
Website:  www.sknetservice.hk

Why in the world would a company have a business website, but uses a different domain for their email? This lead me to think and using a widely available WHOIS database search, I digged out more inconsistencies.

The domain “sknetservices.hk” has a registrant and administrator email that is different from sknetservices.hk itself. Checking those too bring even more different TLDs used as their administrator emails. Until, eventually it leads to “now.net.cn”. Even this was redirected to “now.cn”, another chinese domain registrar, which in turn leads to another administrative address. It goes on and on forever to no end.

The point being - it is not likely that a legitimate domain registrar would bury its real contactable email so deep inside other domains.

What can you do to prevent getting scammed?

The first thing is not to buy your domains from them. You will only end up losing your money and domain names to them. The next best thing is, to register the mentioned domains from your favourite trusted domain registrar before they can. Thirdly, report them to ICANN (the International Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers). Any legitimate domain registrar will have the company listed on ICANN’s accredited registrars list - to be found easily on its website.

So, whatever you do, stay smart and not be taken in by their kinds.

Posted on July 26th, 2008. Categorized under Daily Rant.
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