mrBadak.com

Sorry for the lack of updates - I have to blame it on lack of sleep (nervous bah the night before my first day on the new job) and catching it up on the next day.

Anyway, on my first day of work, I had a small but interesting task. It started with my boss forwarding me an email. Here’s the content (my office’s domain name has been replaced with XXXXX)

From: “james.zhou” [james.zhou@domaininasia.com]
Date: 7 January 2008 14:39:49 GMT+08:00
To: “XXXXX” [xxxxx@XXXXX.com]
Subject: Domain name of xxxxx (To CEO)

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 4, 2008, we received an application formally. One company named “HengTong Holdings Ltd” wanted to register following Domain names:

XXXXX.cn
XXXXX.com.cn
XXXXX.net.cn
XXXXX.org.cn
XXXXX.com.hk
XXXXX.hk
XXXXX.cc
XXXXX.tw
XXXXX.com.tw

Internet brand keyword:
XXXXX

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 Holdings company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

James zhou
Asia Domain Name Registration Limited

My boss’ next directive was to call James’ number and block the registration, and at the same time, asks what can be done to block future registration.

So without much ado, I called the listed number, which is in Hong Kong. When I got James Zhou on the line, he was barely speaking English.

He was saying words one-by-one, like “we, have, receive, an, application”… put a second in between those words and with a chinese accent, that was how he speak. When I asked some questions, he answered in the same manner.

It sounded like he was reading. Then I smelled scam. I mean, surely you would put someone who is good in English to send out emails and expecting people to call you back.

Anyway, from what I gathered, he said that we have 7-days to register the domain name or else they would allow the 3rd party to register the names. Since we are the owner of the .com name, so we have the priority to register first. So he says we can register with them and to do it asap. That was our only option to safeguard our brand names under those country specific domain names.

When I reported this to my boss, we both think it was a scam, so I search for “Heng Tock Holdings” and nothing came out. Then I search for “domaininasia.com” and I found this page.

The content doesn’t say anything about this tactic but the comments by the users confirmed our suspicions. They operate under different names (Liaoning JE Network Information & Technology Co, Shanghai NIC Network Service Co. Ltd, etc) and will target small and medium-sized companies outside of China/HK/Taiwan.

After reading the comments, I pity some of them as they replied the email and included their phone numbers, some even their personal numbers. So these “agents” kept on calling them, in the middle of the night (since they are calling from Asia) and pester them to register or they will lose their brand names in those country’s TLD.

So if you own a domain name and have a serious e-commerce going on, you can expect this kind of email to reach you sooner or later (anyone can smell a chinese spin-off of 419?)

Now what should you do if or when you receive the email? Well just ignore it. That’s the best advice.

However, if the thought of someone register your domain name with the China domain (.cn) and take advantage of your brand name bothers you, then go ahead and register the domain name but do it through your own favourite registrar though.

Skip Mr James (or whatever his name is) here. Google for the price of the domain name and buy from reputable domain registrars.