

The Asian domain-name extortion scam - sahillavingia
http://www.marco.org/1176211147

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jasonkester
You'll get these for every domain you register, and they can be safely
ignored.

Getting your .com.cn domain wasn't a priority yesterday, so why would you
waste even a second considering it today? You registered the .com, and the
.net/.org if they were available because that's good practice. Maybe a few
popular misspellings too if they're available.

But there are 500 other TLDs out there that you didn't register. For good
reason. Because they're worthless.

Some random email out of the blue doesn't change that fact.

~~~
zachinglis
Agreed.

I was actually shocked to see people falling for this. I deleted mine straight
away knowing it was spam. Maybe I'm just a cynic :)

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snowmaker
At Scribd we get about one of these per day now. Almost everyone has fallen
for it once. As scam emails go, it is very clever, and routinely fools tech-
savvy people who would never go for a 419 scam. Good of Marco to point it out.

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kschua
I got this a few years back. I replied and got the email telling me to
register for it. I just ignored their reply and guess what. The company
registered my domain with the .cn. After reading this post, I checked the .cn
domain again and it expired last Dec.

Base on my experience these guys might just register and hold your .cn domain
for a few years.

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sahillavingia
I get one of these for every _single_ website or app I launch. It's a
benchmark: if I get one, I've made it decently popular enough for it to get
around to them. There's always a bright side. :)

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jon914
I got one of these pretty recently. Like all cold calls that feel out of the
blue, I googled up an extract of it and tossed in the trash after realizing
that it was a (fairly well-worded) scam.

~~~
callmeed
Ditto.

They were actually pretty persistent too.

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jrockway
Is this a scam or do you actually get the domain names? If you get what they
are selling you, then it's just unsolicited advertising, which is not really a
scam.

~~~
michaelfairley
The fact that they are claiming that a fictitious someone else is trying to
buy the names in order to convince you to act quickly is what makes it a scam.

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seldo
My co-founder got one of these emails about 12 months ago. Even the opening
email sounds pretty scammy, and quick googling shows they send out loads of
these, so I shot it down. It must be worth their time if they're still doing
it years later.

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gallerytungsten
These scams are very, very common, and have been around for years. On a
regular basis, I get letters from a company called "Domain Registry of
America" (or something like that) who kindly offer to register .biz variations
(and whatnot) for my domain names.

~~~
prawn
I have had 100+ paper letters from Domain Registry of America (or similar)
trying to snipe domain renewals over the years. Waste of paper.

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mkramlich
These scams are partly enabled by the fact that the domain system has so many
suffixes. It was predictable. One solution is to remove the suffixes. Yes
there'd be pain migrating/collapsing to that but there is clearly pain now
when we don't.

~~~
DotSauce
We are moving towards the opposite. You will begin to see a lot more domain
extensions as ICANN allows anyone with deep enough pockets to launch their own
top-level domain.

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prawn
I get these on behalf of my clients all the time. Don't know of anyone who's
fallen for it - if clients get it, they tend to ask me first before dealing
with it.

It's the internet. It's always a scam. (TM)

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paraschopra
I get two such mails every month; it is a brilliantly executed scam though. I
almost fell for it the first time I saw it.

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rwhitman
Yup, I got the same email from that same company for 2 different sites.

Glad to confirm that its a scam for sure. I figured it was an easy one to pull
- play it off like there's trademark infringement and then sell the 12
'hijacked' domains at once.

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stackthat
We keep getting this I think every other 2-3 months, I'm not quite sure why
such a smart guy fell for the first one :) We keep ignoring those guys.

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ohashi
All the time. Also renewal scams. Appraisal Scams.

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wazoox
Got this too last week, I simply ignored it. However I have to admit I
considered answering it for a while.

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eli
I've been getting these for at least a year. I wrote back the first time too.
I bet it's really effective.

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DotSauce
Has nobody followed up to see which registrars are to blame? Could be a simple
fix if reported to ICANN.

~~~
bombs
ICANN don't maintain the .cn TLD. If China's attitude to copyright, trademark
and other IP infringement is anything to go by, I don't think CNNIC is going
to do much.

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istvanp
If it was a courtesy email it would of been written in Engrish.

~~~
bruceboughton
would _have_ been written in English

