Chinese Company Contacting Me

What is the scam?

[ember]

I am in the US and have received a notice from a Chinese domain registrar who says a major china company, which is a real company, wants to register the same name as mine, but with different extensions (.asia and .cn). They say the Chinese government requires that they contact me and give me the first right of refusal on those names. Of course, they want me to register through them. Is that the scam? Seems like a lot of work just to get registrations.

[engine]

This approach has been around for years, and not just from the Chinese. It is devised to encourage you buy domains from them.

Unless you actually want the domains, just ignore it. If you do want them, go to your own domain registrar.

[bhartzer]

engine is right, they're just trying to get you to buy those domain names at in inflated price. I recall getting those back as early as 2002 or 2003 or even earlier than that. It's an old scam.

[ember]

Thanks for the info. I'm surprised I haven't heard of this before since we've been around since 1999.

[rajivatre]

Even better just reply them that you have a copyright for the domain name term and you can take legal action if the similar domain names are booked. Believe me they wont release those domains. :)

PS: have tried this personally.

Thanks
Rajiv

[lucy24]

have tried this personally.

In what country? In the US you can't copyright names, though you can register them as trademarks. Canada apparently works differently.

Did you really con someone into thinking that once you've registered a name with one extension, you can block everyone in the world from registering the same name with any and all other extensions? Or did it just make them stop bugging you? :)

[nomis5]

Rajivatre

The reason they never registered them is because they never had any intention of registering them. They wanted to trick you into registering them and pay for it.

[HuskyPup]

but with different extensions (.asia and .cn)

And they obviously don't check before sending out their scams since in the past I have received these e-mails when I already had those domain.tlds up and running for quite some time!