2.2.08 Chinese domain name scammers
[Cross-posted] Since November, I have received scam emails from a company called China Net Technology Ltd. A page about the scam can be found in the comments here.
The MO: a company finds a dot com and sends them a letter, saying that another company plans to register the same name, but for various Chinese territories (with the cn, tw and hk suffixes, among others). Your expected reaction: you panic and decide to negotiate with the company, because it claims it is a registry service for domain names. Their response: they send you a form for the domain names, at outrageous (thousands of dollars) prices. Initially, I was so naïve I started talking to these people. They did highlight a few domains our company planned on getting, so we registered those—but through our regular domain name registration service, paying a normal price. When they sent me the form, I said, ‘Forget it.’ I knew how much these names were actually worth and how they were probably phonies. Their response, sensing that the deal was about to slip through their fingers, was to say that the company wanting to register the domains was known for porn. By this point I didn’t really care. It got more suspicious as these emails kept on coming, either from another company or from the same one, but claiming yet another group was planning to register the same domains. I’ve had three more for one dot com and another for a dot org, same MO. Ergo: these are scammers. I was lucky. According to the E-consultancy page I cited, some folks even get called up by the scammers. I was fortunate that I was travelling when they first emailed me, so they never figured out where I was. So while you should protect your domain names, if you are interested in Chinese ones, do not get suckered in by these folks. Use your regular registry service or a respectable company. Posted by Jack Yan, 05:15 Comments:
Thanks Jack for sharing, a similar post blog (from a legitimate China-based web hosting firm) is covering the issue as well:
Post a Comment
http://blog.sinohosting.net/beware-of-chinese-domain-names-fraud/ Links to this post:
|
NoteEntries from 2006 to the end of 2009 were done on the Blogger service. As of January 1, 2010, this blog has shifted to a Wordpress installation, with the latest posts here.With Blogger ceasing to support FTP publishing on May 1, I have decided to turn these older pages in to an archive, so you will no longer be able to enter comments. However, you can comment on entries posted after January 1, 2010. Quick linksAdd feedsIndividual JY&A and Medinge Group blogs+ Previous posts |
||
DonateIf you wish to help with my hosting costs, please feel free to donate. |
|||
Copyright ©200210 by Jack Yan & Associates. All rights reserved. Photograph of Jack Yan by Chelfyn Baxter. |