Chinese domain registration scam?

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Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

Hi all, haven't dropped in in a while, just been busy with RL stuff and hope to be back around here at some point...

Got this email. I'm 99% sure it isn't legit, and in any case the referenced domain isn't worth much to me in any business sense (so I wouldn't respond). But I wanted to know if anyone had received an email like this... I suspect the scam could go along typical 419-style "processing fee" stuff, but I wanted to know if anyone else has seen this one before...

Quote:

Dear Manager:

We are a Domain Name registration service company, which is a professional Internet Domain Name Registration and dispute resolution organization in China.On January,29th,2010, We received DERUI Investment company's application that they are registering the name "*******" as their Internet Trademark and "*******.cn","*******.com.cn" ,"*******.asia"domain names etc.,It is China and ASIA domain names.But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so I am sending you this Email to check.According to the principle in China,your company is the owner of the trademark,In our auditing time we can keep the domain names safe for you firstly, but our audit period is limited, if you object the third party application these domain names and need to protect the brand in china and Asia by yourself, please let the responsible officer contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind regards

Angela

Followed by a couple Chinese phone numbers.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

Heh. Sorry to double-post and all, but I've answered my own question.

It is indeed a fake-site/advance fee type situation, where they collect your email address off the WHOIS domain lists and when you reply they ask for an exorbitant fee to 'protect' your domain names. heh.

Probably no baiting opportunity since as soon as you reject their initial fee they will flake, but here is the fake site: http://www.ygnetwork.cn

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:25 am

This one comes up every once in a while--it is an old and common scam. There should be some old threads in misc about this, if I recall someone did try to make them run a bit, but as expected it didn't last long.

ETA--it's not really a case of a "processing fee" -- in many of these the goal is to get you to register additional domains with a legitimate yet over priced registrar.

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