The Chinese Domain Name Scam
January 7th, 2008 by Vishen Lakhiani Read more about ArticlesA number of our clients have received email like this from a domain registrar in China. Here is the exact email a client received. (we changed their actual domain name to the fictitious name plaxolabs to protect their privacy)
Dear CEO,
We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company's in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.
On the Jan 3, 2008, we received an application formally. One company named " HengTong International Holdings Ltd" wanted to register following
Domain names:
PlaxoLabs.cc
PlaxoLabs.com.hk
PlaxoLabs.com.tw
PlaxoLabs.hk
PlaxoLabs.mobi
PlaxoLabs.net.cn
PlaxoLabs.org.cn
PlaxoLabs.tw
Internet brand keyword:
PlaxoLabs
through our body.
After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company's name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of HengTong company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Mars.zhou
Wow - what utter crock. What what I loved about this scam email is how honest it all sounds. You almost want to thank Mr Mars Zhou for being so diligent and bringing this to your attention.
The scammers behind this are using two of the greatest marketing tricks in the book.
The first is the "likability" trigger that Cialdina writes about in his book "Influence". They make you almost like them by appearing to be nice, diligent and on your side.
The next is the scarcity trigger, also covered by Cialdini in "Influence". You may never have considered registering your domain in China, but when you find that someone else is about to grab your precious name and it won't be available anymore, you suddenly develop an irrational urge to buy this name.
More on these scams:
Thread on Search Engine Forums
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Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley.
Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.
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Vishen Lakhiani
Write them back and tell them you want to register:
plaxowantschinatoleavetibet.hk
See how much positive feedback you're going to get on that puppy
Your correct response is to report this immediately to the CNNIC by emailing the correspondence with your suspicions to service@cnnic.cn.
The CNNIC is the China Internet Network Information Centre which regulates domain names in China. Visit them at http://www.cnnic.cn/en/index/index.htm - all the rules and regulations for China Domain Names are spelt out here, and you can email them direct from the site. They are not amused by this,and will likely take action.
Thanks for sharing. A similar scam scheme is covered in this blog post:
http://blog.sinohosting.net/beware-of-chinese-domain-names-fraud/
[...] doing some research here, here and here I have confirmed my initial belief that these are just emails to scare business owners [...]
It is covered here as well:
http://blog.sinohosting.net/beware-of-chinese-domain-names-fraud/
LOL--In China I think they kill people for stuff like this. I saw an article written up about four other scams dealing with domain names on this site:
http://www.buildasitebookmarks.com/DNS_scams.html. Check it out all you domain name owners. Ok--l8r..
[...] http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/the-chinese-domain-name-scam/333/ [...]
[...] zu finden, dass derartige Mails gerade wieder vermehrt auftreten (yet another scam …), und diverse Blogger berichten aktuell, auch mit Auflistung identifizierter [...]
There is another scam from a Chinese company called Globaldns.org.cn. I have reported them to the CNNIC as John H. Scam suggested.
Thanks for the info - don't forget to post about the Australian domain name industry - it's really starting to take off... Thanks again
Hello,
Apparantly, there are more than one of these scams going around (I've seen others talked about in other threads). It's really sad, because in all probability, nobody is actually looking for the domains stated, and what you pay to the letter writer probably gets you nothing (i.e., they are probably not even really registrars).
Although I am not a lawyer, and am only speaking through the lens of a "common man," I think the real issue here is disclosure. There does not appear to be anything per se illegal about the activities you cited LegalZoom as participating in, as long as the buyer is aware of the costs and potential risks, and can read this information without a magnifying glass.
An exception to the above would be the provision of paper forms, which are identical to those available for free from other sources (such as government agencies). In such case, this may amount to substantive fraud, as the buyer is paying for what he mistakenly thinks is a value added service. But the added fees for electronic filing services cannot be viewed in this light, as LegalZoom is actually performing some work (filling out the online form for the customer).
I am so glad I was able to confirm this scam. We received emails very similar to the sample above. The interesting thing is that the email showed up within 36 hours of of research project we did for a client to look into importing wines into China. The emails were very compelling but I didn't fall for it. My only concern was their comment about registering Internet Keywords. I did spend some time researching this and calling my ISP to better understand this. It appears that Keyword Registration is big in China and not in the US.
Nice blog, thanks for the info!
Great work you are doing here.
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That is quite intriguing. It gave me a number of ideas and I'll be writing them on my blog eventually. I'm bookmarking your site and I'll be back again. Thank you again!