Scam Emails About Registering Domain Names and Trademarks

Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more clients seeking advice on certain emails that they’re receiving. At first glance, these emails appear to be from a well-meaning Internet firm. The emails come with a friendly warning that someone is trying to register domain names similar to their company trademarks, and proceed by offering “assistance”. Other variants include having the company registering the domains with them to “protect the company’s trademarks”.

It would have been a nice reminder/warning if the whole thing was true, but these emails are designed to prey on companies, and some companies may not know if these emails are legitimate.

This could only lead to the scammer extorting a large sum of money for the supposed “retrieval” of the domain names in question, “registering” at an astronomical price, or just phishing where your email is identified as a legitimate, responsive business email address that they can now use to spam.

Here’s an example of one of the emails:

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a
pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On 10 Nov,2009, we received an application formally, one person named
“Andrew Hunter” wanted to applied for the Internet brand
and some domain names through our body.

During our preliminary investigation,we found that these domain names¡¯
keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder
whether you consigned “Andrew Hunter” to register these domain names
through us or not? Or is “Andrew Hunter” your business partner or
distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this
company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better,
please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email
ASAP.

In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one
company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t
resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the
application of ” Andrew Hunter”.

Thank you for your cooperate.

Bottomline

Don’t fall for this scam. It would make sense for you to register and park the domain name that you want before anyone gets it, and if you’re expanding or thinking of expanding your business into certain countries, then it would also make sense to register the appropriate country extensions, to avoid it being snapped by other people. Besides your competitors, you’ll have to contend with domainers, even scammers. The best thing to prevent losing your domain name or getting into an ugly and drawn-out dispute is to register your domain name beforehand. The cost of a few dollars a year is minuscule compared to the cost of losing the domain name of your choice.

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