The Tekblog

I got an e-mail from a client recently that was forwarding me an e-mail that they had received. A paste of the e-mail text below:

<snip>
Dear President,    

Hello! Sorry to trouble you!   

We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet Intellectual property right protection in Asia. On the Dec.21, 2009, we received an application formally from Dci-High Investment Corp,who applied for the Internet Keyword "*********** " <– (Omitted to protect client) and some domain names relevant to this trademark from our organization. According to our procedures and in order to protect your intellectual property rights, we need to send this email to the original company for confirming the actual relationship with this company.If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other motivation to register these  domain names and probably want to do some cybersquatting. Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible. 

PS:If you are not in charge of this matter,please transfer this email to appropriate dept.

Best Regards,

Batista Chan
Hong Kong Net Center
T:   00852-30723948
F:   00852-30723949
E:   batista.c@mail.networks.hk.cn
Website:  www.net-center.org
</snip>

At first glance it sounds at least somewhat legitimate – but don’t be fooled – this is a scam. Just doing a quick google search on Internet Trademark Scam turns up dozens of results about these guys.

They are apparently preying on people’s misunderstanding of domain name registration and internet keywords. We replied to this e-mail that we were not interested and thanked him for his time – and received another e-mail in response.

<snip>
Dear *****, (Removed)

Maybe you don’t think those domains are not important for you.However, please note, they still applied for the Internet keyword ***********, which is very vital for you.

Once the third party register it successfully, when your customers google it , it will be redirect their website first rather yours.

Meanwhile, it has great impact on your keyword ranks in google.

Internet keyword are very important for any companies.

Once Dci-High Investment Corp register it successfully, it will have rights to dispute your domain www.************.com in two years and also affect your google ranks when your customer searching it in the internet.

You will suffer a lot of loss by then. Hope you think twice.

If you still decide to give up protecting the Internet keyword "***********",please let me know as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Batista Chan
2010-01-07
</snip>

The e-mail went back and fourth between this gentleman and I. I examined the mail headers from his e-mails and he was using Zoho for his e-mail and Foxmail as his mail client – hardly a corporate setup.

I found several links to others who had seen this scam:

http://www.kenkai.com/seo-blog-article-142.htm
http://spamscamwatch.blogspot.com/2009/06/domain-scammers-will-charge-you-fees.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=892134
http://www.namepros.com/warnings-and-alerts/592211-i-receive-email-look-like-scam.html
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1217879.html

I wanted to make this blog post to raise awareness of this scam. Hopefully Google picks up the keywords from my title and it will serve as notice to others investigating similar attempts to scam.

Thanks!

-Justin