China Domain Scam Alert

Last week I received an email from a doman registration company in China. The email sounds like this:

(It’s very urgent, Please transfer this email to your CEO or appropriate person, Thanks)

Dear CEO/Principal,

This is Neil Dong—Senior Consultant of domain name registration and solution center in china. have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on March 26th, 2012, one company which self-styled “Cakebar Investments co.,Ltd” were applying to register “awesomename” as Network Brand and following domain names:

“awesomename.asia
awesomename.cn
awesomename.co.in
awesomename.com.cn
awesomename.com.hk
awesomename.com.tw
awesomename.hk
awesomename.in
awesomename.net.cn
awesomename.org.cn
awesomename.tw
“

After our initial checking, we found that the brand name applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and brand, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If your company has no relationships with that company nor do not authorized, please reply to us within 7 workdays, if we can’t get any information from yours over 7 workdays, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Cakebar Investments co.,Ltd” .

Thanks for your cooperation.

Best Regards,

Neil Dong (Mr.)
Senior Consultant Manager

Gulp!? A company in China, “Cakebar Investments co. Ltd” want to use one of my domain (in this article is “awesomename”) as their branding. And they also want to purchase the other available domain names, .asia, .cn, etc and put them into their network brand.

I replied the email and have several conversations with Neil Dong, so called “Senior Consultant Manager” in that company.

At the same time, I also asked my friends on Facebook whether this email is legit or just a scam. Many of them said this email is a scam. Even my friend working in MyCERT also told me that they received quite number of cases same like this!

But I kept on replying emails with this “Senior Consultant Manager” asking what are the benefits the company will get when they register Malay words as their branding. (Yes, they want to register Malay words as branding in China!)

He then pushed me to register the other available domain names to protect my branding and also suggested me to register “awesomename” as Network Brand with them. Sounds fishy isn’t it?

Then I did some Google searches and found several articles same like this one. The domain is different but the moduse operandi is exactly the same.

Top 10 Blogs Share About the China Domain Scam

• http://www.neokrish.co.in/blog/get-entertained-with-spammers
• http://www.ogosense.com/blog/are-you-a-victom-of-cybersquatting
• http://texturbation.com/blog/?p=343
• http://keepsafeonthenet.co.uk/2010/12/asian-domain-registration-service-in-china/
• http://trusted.md/feed/items/system/2008/01/29/asia_domain_name_registration_scam
• http://www.piotrkrzyzek.com/registration-proclamation-chinese-domain-scam/
• http://www.firetrust.com/en/blog/chris/domain-name-scams
• http://www.wildwoodinteractive.com/wordpress/?p=351
• http://blog.onlymyemail.com/registration-proclamation-domain-registration-fraud/
• http://www.halleynet.co.uk/wordpress/2012/03/29/domain-scams/

After combined the inputs I got from my friends and articles on the Internet, then I decided it is a scam.

I have stopped communicate with this guy and let’s see whether this company, Cakebar Investments co. Ltd, want to register the available domain names or not.

Oh yeah, there is no hit on “Cakebar Investments” in Google. 😀