Whether we have a local storefront or run an international mega-business, we all want to protect our brand. For huge companies with an international presence this may appear to have a bigger impact, but no matter our size we all want to have our bit of  turf. This may be in the form of brick-and-mortar type real estate or domain names which are our cyber-space real estate.

We register our business domain name. We may opt to buy domain names that are very similar to ours, or have common misspellings. As more and more domain name extensions (also called TLDs) are created tt would be possible to spend quite a lot of our hard earned dough protecting our cyber turf.

This opens business owners up to all sorts of domain name scams.

One that is going around (again/still) is from a company in China that claims to be a domain registry. The name of the company and their email address varies, as does the text within the email, but the gist is the same. Some 3rd party in China (or Asia) has requested this company to register a domain name that is the same as yours–or very similar–with and Asian TLD, such as .cn, .hk. The domain registry is contacting you to find out if you authorized this transaction. They typically request a response within 7 days or they will proceed with the transaction. If you did not authorize the registration and let them know, they will “handle” the issue.

How frickin’ kind of them.

How they will “handle” the issue is to contact you and try to strong-arm you into paying an outrageous amount of money for your domain name with the Asian TLDs. AND they will try to sell you some brand “protection”.

Do not fall for this domain name scam.

This scam is hitting the US and European markets. You can read more from European Domain Centre by clicking here.

While some people suggest you respond to the scammer with insults, I suggest it is not worth your time, which is much better spent letting others know of the scam. If no one responds, this will stop. It only continues because people fall for it and send them money!

What if you want to buy the Asian TLDs? Then go to your current domain name registrar and buy them that way. You will get a much better rate and know what you are actually buying.

If you ever have a question about whether or not you need to purchase a domain name, contact your IT department, our marketing department, or contact us at InternetAdvertisingThatworks.com