Internet Domain Trademark and Keyword Scam Beware!

[Mechatrommer]

few days ago i got an email from "Tony Liu" <yogudns78@aliyun.com> titled "soasystem CN/.Asia domain and keyword" saying a company Kemei Holdings Ltd wants to register my domain name. but since it conflicted with mine, i replied and asked them (the so so called registrar from china) to advice Kemei to use another name. i did check aliyun.com and yogudns.com before replying, some chinese written page with "registrar" alphabet, so i thought its legit. i also checked Kemei Holdings Ltd, a dissolved (liquidated?) company that has nothing to do with my hobby business, so i thought they are opening up (i dont know this enterprise business) so what the hell.

few days later a person "Gareth Ren" <garethren@gmail.com> pretending from Kemei emailed me that they will proceed with *.org.cn, *.com.cn and many other domain branches etc etc with * = soasystem = mine, as the name is so (damn desperately maybe) important to their business. i replied ok please proceed no problem.

and then just now i got an email reply from "Tony Liu" <tony.liu@yogudns.com> again (i just noticed different email add compared to the 1st) advising me about this matter (that usually this happened when a company wants to compete with me) and offer me a package to protect my domain and "keyword". i replied i cannot afford multiple domains and i'm not worth as a competitor. i asked them to proceed. at this point i still dont have any suspicion. what made me curious is that what is internet trademark and "keyword"?. i googled myself (soasystem) it just turned out as normal with soasystems on top of me. and then i googled "what is registering internet keyword". behold! i got this link...

http://www.insercorp.com/blog/post/december/09/2010/beware-of-chinese-domain-scams
http://www.europeandomaincentre.com/pages/news-room/domain-management-news/hey!-got-an-email-from-china-domain-name-registration-center-asian-domain-registration-service-in-china-the-department-of-registration-service-in-china-etc.#.VwaMdDGaN8F

its a scam! i recheck yogudns.com and now its gone (you still can google it as accredited registrar this minute). after so many years of successfully diverting/binning spams, this is another time i got sucked by it, the last time when i was like 20+ (student). i'm grateful to be this small. so beware eevbloggers who maintain a domain name. maybe you already know this but i'm expanding this awareness for those who havent, as i almost get preyed.

[Mechatrommer]

now i got a mailer-daemon kickback:

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

<tony.liu@yogudns.com>:
No MX or A records for yogudns.com

whats funny is i treated them just as real (3 emails!) what a waste of time.

[Bud]

I received a similar email may be 4 or 5 years ago, did not bother replying. So nothing new.

[Kilrah]

I think I answered one serveral years ago with something along the likes of "OK, whatever", strangely never got an answer pitching to sell me something and pretty much forgot about it. Got a few more subsequently but ignored them.

[suicidaleggroll]

I get an email about some chinese company trying to steal my domain name and offering a "protection service" a few times a year.  It's bait, just ignore them.

[SeanB]

I got the proper scammers, legit looking website, legit seeming domain, and they called to get me to do business with them.  Persistent, even though I told them that they were scammers flat out. They are well known to be operating a scam where they oder with legit looking details, a legit looking official order, then when you go looking for payment the real party has no idea. They pretend to be government departments looking for stuff, but the domains are not quite genuine government department domains, but a very close non related TLD instead which they can register cheaply.

Did not think to look who was the hosting provider though, was just glad to get rid of them, and called all the others I knew in the field locally to warn of them running through the public directories of companies.

[Dago]

I've also been mailed this same type of thing. It is actually rather clever and in my case was rather well executed as well (meaning english was good, websites looked legit etc.) and I immediately didn't even suspect anything.

[Bob F.]

Like many, I have had several of these over the years. 

Bottom line is: if you receive an unsolicited email , it is 99.9% certainly a scam. If it is offering to do you a favour, it is 99.9999999% sure to be a scam.  Do not reply to it - that just tells them that they have a valid email address, that the recipient is naive, and will increase the spam you get. Mark it as spam, delete it and move on.

[Falcon69]

I've had several over the past year. It's funny, I was fine the few months to a year before, after registering my domain name

But nearly 1 day later after registering on Alibaba....I get these eMails now.

I just ignore them. It's easy to spot fakes. They have a weird eMail address, not something like ****@companyname.com.

I do however occasional get emails from Hostgator asking me to secure the .net, .biz. . domains so that if someone wants to try and clone my business using one of those, they can't because I've already registered.  At $15 a month for each .net or whetever domain for a company who has yet to see any profits (it's just a hobby, company gives me something to do), Just isn't worth it.  I've already secured the .com, and that's good enough for me.

[janekm]

It's not always a spam... Back when I was more into photography I once got an email from someone saying they were from a Turkish design company looking to license one of my images for their banking client. Which made me immediately suspicious as that's quite similar to a common advance fee fraud script.
But I humoured them and gave them an appropriate quote, and told them I'd accept payment by PayPal, which they accepted and promptly paid, to my slight surprise

[Mechatrommer]

i keep receiving the tony liu's email with the same pushy intonation, this is the 2nd or 3rd time i have to delete it. it seems he's lacking and/or want a bit of "religious basic 101 speach", so i gave him one lets see if he come back again, indicating his interest. may he find the true path...