NetInChina domain name registrar spam
[This user emailed me with their domain name included in the email below. For privacy, I've changed all instances of their domain to "domain-name".]
Question:
We received this email today. Do you think it’s something I should be concerned about? Either someone is going to try to use our name in China, or is this registrar just trying to get us to contact them and then they’ll try to get us to register these domains through them? What do you think? The only reason I even question it is because we do a lot of business in China and I wouldn’t want some company representing that they are us.
Thanks for your opinion.
From: Villien [mailto:Villien@netinchina.hk]
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 12:50 AM
To: greg
Subject: Domain name of domain-nameDear CEO,
We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in china. We have something important need to confirm with your company.
On the Dec 3, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinyu Holdings Limited ” wanted to register following Domain names:
domain-name.biz
domain-name.cn
domain-name.com.cn
domain-name.hk
domain-name.info
domain-name.mobi
domain-name.net
domain-name.net.cn
domain-name.org
domain-name.org.cn
domain-name.tw
Internet brand keyword:
domain-name
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 Xinyu company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Villien li
———————————————————————————-
Sponsoring Registrar: China Net Technology Limited
Tel : 00852-30759838
Fax 00852-31771520
Email: Villien@netinchina.hk
Website: www.china-net.hk
Answer:
So they’re telling you that they (NetInChina) are a domain registrar (this does indeed seem to be valid), and “Xinyu Holdings Limited” is trying to register a bunch of domains very similar to yours, and that NetInChina is holding off those registrations until they have a chance to talk to you?
Ignore this email. It’s just a poorly-executed, slightly-customized spam email.
All domain name purchasing – even for Chinese websites – can be done from anywhere in the world by you and me. And here’s a guy who had a very similar email compared to yours.
I feel very comfortable telling you to just ignore this.
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China Web Hosting:
It is sad to see hosting companies in China involved in such malpractices and trying to extort money from others. The Chinese web hosting industry really needs a huge shake up.
4 December 2007, 11:50 pmPat
Shanghai
Chris:
We got the same kind of email today. I replied to ask what they suggest we do and this is their reply:
—-
Hi Chris,
Because domain name takes open registration, this is international domain name registration principle. So Starnet company has right to register it. As a domain name registrar, we have no right to dispute their application. So required by China government to inform your company to protect your interest.
I think you must know some cases about the domain names grabbed by the others or the third party, and also frequently happens internationally. They register the domain for imitating you web. And invade some market of you or link to some illegal porno webs or sell to your competitors, even something worse. I understand that all the foresaid are not the situation you want to meet, if you want to better develop you company, what to do is obvious to you. I hope you pay your attention to these, that’s why we inform you, we also won’t want to see things happen like this.
As the owner of “zaratours.com”, you will get the priority to register these domain names and keyword. Of course, each company has their own idea. If you don’t think their application will affect your company, you can give up, we will finish their registration. But if you think their registration will confuse your clients and harm your profits, we can send an application form to you and help you register these within dispute period. This is the only way to prevent domain name grab. Hope get your decision ASAP, so that we can handle the next step.
Sincerely
5 December 2007, 9:42 amAnthony
—
The email seems pretty much personally written (not auto-generated). I don’t find a lot about this practise on the internet. Can more people please share their experiences with netinchina with us? More people having received such mails before?
abkaiser:
>As the owner of “zaratours.com”, you will get the
>priority to register these domain names and keyword.
…And there’s the catch. “We’re looking out for you - trust us when we say that Company X wants to register your domain name. All you have to do is register 20 domains with us to protect your own company from getting redirected to porn and competitor sales. Aren’t we helpful? Money, please.”
A nice combination of scare tactics leading to a mass of domain purchases.
>The email seems pretty much personally written
> (not auto-generated).
Best case, it’s a pasted text with a find-and-replace of “your domain name.com” to represent whoever they’re emailing. Basically, send an email to the administrative contact of a domain. Based on the email’s domain, paste that into the text of your email. I could see doing that manually, but automated mailers could easily do the job exponentially faster.
Also remember what I said originally - you don’t need netinchina to do this work for you. Your network and system administrator can do this through more trusted companies - the “big guns” of domain registration - like netsol.com and register.com.
>Can more people please share their experiences
>with netinchina with us?
Hear hear! Anyone else?
B. Lentz:
We too received the same spam email. We were glad we found your answer on the web. Thanks.
B-
From: Villien [mailto:Villien@netinchina.hk]
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 12:50 AM
To: greg
Subject: Domain name of domain-name
Dear CEO,
We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in china. We have something important need to confirm with your company.
On the Dec 3, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named “Xinyu Holdings Limited ” wanted to register following Domain names:
domain-name.biz
domain-name.cn
domain-name.com.cn
domain-name.hk
domain-name.info
domain-name.mobi
domain-name.net
domain-name.net.cn
domain-name.org
domain-name.org.cn
domain-name.tw
Internet brand keyword:
domain-name
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 Xinyu company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Villien li
———————————————————————————-
Sponsoring Registrar: China Net Technology Limited
6 December 2007, 3:30 pmTel : 00852-30759838
Fax 00852-31771520
Email: Villien@netinchina.hk
Website: http://www.china-net.hk
sean:
I have also just recieved exactly the same scam email from Netinchina.
Dec 6 2007.
For sure its a scam to get you to buy all these domain names.
I believe I have had a similar scam to this before from a Uk registrar claiming they had a client that was about to purchase a domian specificaly sounding like my business … as it as a UK company and a direct phone call I actualy went for that at the time.
I wouldn’t go for this one… I wouldn’t even reply for fear of encouraging even more spam.
7 December 2007, 5:40 amLPL:
Ok, so this is spam. What a relief! I’ve responded a few times to this email each time asking specific questions -out of curiosity. It looks like the initial email is exaclty the same but with a different company name and author. Then, depending on the questions you ask certain phrases are changed around. I too asked “what do you suggest I do” and the reply was in a similar format to Chris’s email however more personalised but with a cut and paste job of the same statements as Chris’s. Their webpage looks legit however the english is poorly written. Could this spam scam be a one person unit or do you think they are a team?
10 December 2007, 7:15 amFreelance Webdesigner:
If in doubt google for your answer. I find this post very handy as i have just received the same email. The english was so bad that i immediately had my doubts. This blog clarifies the intent. Thanks
10 December 2007, 8:05 amMatt:
I just got the same thing… knew it was spam, just wondered how many others are getting it.
10 December 2007, 8:51 pmLT:
Thanks for posting it… Just got the same message and was happy to see the post and replies!
11 December 2007, 2:35 amArtimis:
Got the same thing from our client. Hey you know most crappy Chinese companies use computer software to translate their paragraphs from Chinese to English? This is why the English is poorly written
12 December 2007, 11:34 pmTony Martin:
Rcvd the same spam email inc the same company name used to enquire after our domain name in CN/HK.
13 December 2007, 1:53 amI thought it was spam but the irony was I had just spoken to my webhosting co yesterday (the same date stated by Vivien Li!!) about my domain name and its period of ownership. Are they able to tap into the central registry and see such enquiries or is this pure coincidence?
In any event your DBTC certainly put my mind to rest.
Many Thanks
Tony
abkaiser:
“Are they able to tap into the central registry and see such enquiries or is this pure coincidence?”
Yes. The information about when your domain name expires is publicly available.
Nick Godfrey:
Received a similar spam email.
18 December 2007, 1:52 amIt was sent to three advertised email addresses from our website.
I did a domain name search to find that the domain names similar to mine e.g .net, .com, .biz etc were already registered and unavailable.
I think it is a fairly poor effort on their part as they did not send an email to the registered email address for the domain. Obviously too lazy to do any real investigative work as far as domain registration goes or are they just incompetent?.
Lizzey:
Hi - I have a related query on this. A friend of mine has been speaking to me as I work with domains but basically before Xmas they replied to one of these emails asking for costs from the registrar. I had advised not to have any further correspondence and said I would deal with the registrations using our cheaper and more reputable registrar. But when I came to do this, the scamming registrar has already registered their domains under .com.cn and .cn with his name given as registrant and my friend’s company as the organization. I therefore suspect they will soon be receiving a huge bill for the registrations even though they didn’t request them. What can they do?!
Anybody have any experience of this situation?
4 January 2008, 5:18 amabkaiser:
Anybody have any experience of this situation?
Not specifically that situation, no. However, asking for a cost is not an agreement to pay any money.
If you get a bill, don’t pay it. You never agreed to a purchase.
max:
I got the same thing. Different wording though, but the same deal. “You know, there’s bad guys in this neck of the woods. We can protect you from them”
Protection racket. Chinese net registrar = Paulie in the Sopranos.
10 January 2008, 4:14 pmLizzey:
Hi - thanks for the reply above, but they now own the domains! It is all very well saying to “just ignore” this, but I was wondering whether the registrar would then cancel the registrations or what happens next? Will they need to tale legal action to get the domains back? If anyone has experience of this situation I’d appreciate some advice!
15 January 2008, 5:23 amabkaiser:
…but they now own the domains! It is all very well saying to “just ignore” this, but I was wondering whether the registrar would then cancel the registrations or what happens next?
Your friend is not the person who owns the domain. The person who owns the domain is the person who registered your friend (even if your friend’s name is on the WHOIS information for the domain). Say you own domain mydomain.com. I call you and say, “you should purchase mydomain.net right now!” If you don’t give me permission to do so, and I purchase the domain anyway, then I’m stuck with a domain I don’t want. Not your responsibility. If your friend is worried about this scammer stealing traffic or something similar, you could try to yank ownership with a trademark claim of prior usage. I’m not an internet or trademark lawyer, though, so you may want to contact one if this is a concern. If it’s not, then the person who registered the domain will probably just let the domain fall back into public domain after the domain expires.
charger plate:
How can i check the speed of my web?
24 January 2008, 12:08 amunderplate:
I was wondering whether the registrar would then cancel the registrations.I therefore suspect they will soon be receiving a huge bill for the registrations even though they didn’t request them. What can they do?
24 January 2008, 12:12 amAndy Kaiser:
Underplate, the registrar would either then cancel the registrations (I think there’s a 30 day window in which you can do this), or simply pay for them. I don’t know how much money this type of scam brings in, but it may be enough to pay for the domains that people aren’t scared into registering.
Gijs Vermeer:
Yesterday I received the same mail as the opening email on this page, except that Xinyu was now called Zerdie and the extension .cn followed in the email address. I tried to find out more about the corresponding website http://www.netinchina.hk.cn. When arriving at that website, I got a virus warning and was redirected to a pornosite. A virus check after this found three viruses.
13 February 2008, 3:38 amvanesa:
thanks a lot for your postins! I’ve got the email today. Thanks!
17 April 2008, 7:54 amGreg (New Zealand):
Thanks as well, we got the email today.
22 April 2008, 7:20 pmMelody (Colorado):
Wheew! I was concerned because we have been doing quite a bit of business in China and have been warned that inevitably our product will eventually be ripped off. I’m releived to know this is a scam, and we haven’t fallen for it. Thanks for sharing your comments!
25 April 2008, 4:17 pmfido:
Same here.. thanks for the heads up.
23 July 2008, 10:27 amChuck:
I got the same email sent to me but with a different sender and domain registration company attached to it.
30 September 2008, 9:19 am