Domain scam

by Mufaka 3/24/2008 4:36:00 PM
We recently received the following email regarding our corporate domain name:
From: leo.guo 
Date: 2008/3/23
Subject: (omitted) domain name
To: info 


Dear (omitted domain name)
 We are Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd , which is the domain name
register center in China. We received a formal application from a company who is called
Yunfeitongda International Trade Company  are applying to register "  (omitted)  " as their domain
name and Internet keyword on Mar 23th 2008. Because this involved your company name or
trade marks so we inform you in no time. If you considered these domain names and
internet keywords are important to you and there was necessary to protect them by
registering them first, contact us soon.
Kind Regards,
Leo Guo
Tel:     +86-10-82476192-605
Fax:     +86-10-62477798
Email:   leo.guo@inveis.com
Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd
www.inveis.com

Aside from the poor grammar, this would seem somewhat legitimate. There is an actual website that gives the appearance of being a respectable overseas registrar. It also seems that it would be fairly harmless to respond to the email stating the domain is taken and there is no interest in selling it.

A quick who-is search on inveis.com shows a creation date of 3/20/2008. The email just got a little more than fishy. Googling the company name came up with nothing. Hmm, what are they trying to pull?

A search on their phone number is the only thing that provided any results. http://louminatti.blogspot.com/2008/01/china-scam.html. Hah, same email, only the names have been changed.

Apparantly, they will register your domain under .cn and try to sell it back to you if you respond with any concerns over your domain name. I guess this is what happens when you get tired of writing bots that farm WoW gold for you to sell on eBay.

Tags:

Comments

4/1/2008 8:32:30 AM

I got the same message this morning! Thanks for posting your experience and what you found out. I assumed it was fishy from the grammar. Google'd the company name and found your posting...

Thanks again!

Angel

Angel J us

4/1/2008 3:01:00 PM

Got the same message today. Googled name and found your message. It confirmed my thoughts. Many thanks.
Graham

Graham gb

4/2/2008 1:43:14 AM

Got the same message today. Googled name and found your message. It confirmed my thoughts. Many thanks. Paolo

Paolo it

4/2/2008 2:20:44 AM

Same message today. Thanks.

Morten Ebbesen dk

4/2/2008 3:56:29 PM

I got the same email today. Thanks for posting and sharing...

Daniel Ho ca

4/2/2008 6:37:58 PM

Pretty much the same email I received. They even tried to sell me additional 6 domain names. Thanks for posting and sharing. I assume I just ignore this message from them?

Kenneth Hansen us

4/3/2008 3:09:46 AM

Yes, just ignore it. It's was tempting for me to register our domain in .cn and just reply to them that I was willing to sell it, but it's just a waste of time. I'm happy this post was useful.

Mufaka us

4/3/2008 3:38:55 AM

Same experience. They even mixed up the names of companies who allegedly wanted to register my domains.
Thank you.

L.A.W.

4/3/2008 9:27:35 PM

Thanks for posting this, Mufaka. Got several emails from this company and found your message when google for it.

Julia us

4/4/2008 6:50:58 AM

I got the same email. I typed in their name and got your blog. Thanks so much. I almost got scammed.

cc us

4/9/2008 2:52:07 AM

Pingback from hm2k.com

HM2K.com » Inveis.com .cn domain scam

hm2k.com

4/9/2008 7:25:38 AM

Hi,

Our company got the same email last April 3 from the same company. The truth is, we have received about five such emails from different "domain name registry companies" in the last 15 months. The management is quite alarmed, because of the harm it can do to our company. Are you saying we should ignore these emails? Is there no way legitimate domain name owners can protect themselves from these hustlers? Thank you.

Lisa ph

4/9/2008 9:43:03 PM

Lisa,

The choice is yours to make. For our company, it doesn't matter if the same domain name is registered in .cn or any other top level domain than the ones we currently own (.com, .net, .org). The important thing to note is that they cannot take over your existing domain. They can only register the same name under a different top level domain.

For example; if you own foobar.com they will register foobar.cn and try to sell foobar.cn to you for a premium. If foobar.cn is important to your company, then you probably would have already registered it.

There are 3 actions you can take without being scammed.

1. Ignore the email
2. If you don't care about the domain under .cn but want to scam the scammer: Reply to the email expressing an interest and let them register the domain. When they try to sell it to you, tell them "no thanks, we decided we don't care."
3. If you do care about the domain under .cn, ignore the email and register the domain yourself. Most likely it isn't registered yet. They are waiting for someone to express interest or fear before they spend the money to register it themselves.

Mufaka us

4/18/2008 12:16:31 PM

Received the same mail today, googled an found this. thanks!

Willem nl

4/21/2008 11:00:35 AM

Same mail here. Thanks for reporting!

Jeroen nl

5/1/2008 5:25:34 PM

Same email, thanks.

Re your advise to Lisa - as I understand the domain commerce rules, there is a five-day 'lemon law' provision used by speculators to 'buy' a domain, attempt to sell it at a profit, or release the domain (and get their investment back) if they fail to sell. This kind of email is just a way to narrow the field to suckers (er, customers) who have already professed an interest in the name. Likely if you express interest THEN they will buy the domain, dun you to pay up, or release it in time to recoup the investment if you fail to follow through. If you automate most of this process by crawling websites for contact email addresses I'm guessing it can be a pretty efficient way to make a buck. ...jim

Jim us

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About the author

Name of author Mufaka
I am a software developer currently working on Healthcare solutions using Microsoft technologies.

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