I received the following email from a certain [email protected]
YYY is a company name
ZZZ is OUR company name
Dear Manager,
We are a professional intellectual property rights consultant organization, mainly deal with the global domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection.
On March. 24th, 2010, we formally received an application from YYY, they applied to register the internet brand “ZZZ” and some relevant domain names with our organization.
During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names' keyword is fully identical with your trademark. Therefore, we need to confirm with you, whether you consigned YYY to register these domain names with us or not? Or, is YYY your business partner or distributor? If you have no relationship with this company, we assume that they have other purposes to obtain these domain names.
Currently, we have already suspended this company's application temporarily due to the seriousness of this isuue. In order to avoid the vicious domain name grabbing, please let the relevant person make a confirmation with me via telephone or email as soon as possible. Thank you for your support to our work!
Best Regards
XXX
Tel: xxxxx-xxxx xxxx Fax: xxxxx-xxxx xxxx Email: [email protected] www.world-wtc.cn
This seems legit, or is it?
By the way, XXX is just a first name, not a complete name.
Obviously they want you to respond to their e-mail, followed by "money please" as they attempt to "protect your domain from being unscrupulously used by others" or even get you to sign up for a domain name through them.. but then who knows if they actually register a domain name for you or not; either way it is cold calling in an attempt to get you to purchase something you never needed.
In New Zealand I once received a bill for annual renewal of my domain name. But when I looked more closely at the domain I was "renewing" it turned out to be the "org.nz" version of my ".co.nz" domain. And instead of "renewing" I was actually "purchasing" a new domain. To be honest, I wouldn't have even looked at the fine print except for the fact that the fee appeared to be in the order of 5-10 times the standard registry cost.
The world is awash with con men. The technology age makes it easy for them to get in touch and seem to know far more than any ordinary person should know about you.
I wouldn't trust this.
Companies have no right to prevent anyone registering a domain name with their trademark, as long as the domain registrant doesn't attempt to violate that trademark (e.g. selling products called the same as the trademark) or register the domain to try and extort money out of the trademark holder (e.g. we own the website that's the same as your trademark, give us £10m for it.)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Domain_names (not concrete proof, I know, but better than my own knowledge on trademark law!)
Also it's weird how they use 3 different domains - world-isp.cn, win-west.cn and world-wtc.cn all in the same e-mail. Run a mile!
Well, if it's really http://www.world-isp.cn/ I wouldn't be too sure... If your Chinese is as bad as mine, try the translation:
I don't know what it's all about, but it looks weird.
That is a common and (relatively speaking) well known scam that's been doing the rounds for over a year now. You'll find references to it on various spam/security sites.
i register a domain with hosting plan before and the domain was change to another doamin name due to some reason, now i want to ask if it is possible to make the hosting plan from the old domain that is no more active to the new domain.is it possible?