I just got contacted today by a ‘chinese gentleman’
…that wanted to confirm with me that a company called Qol asia Investment Ltd had applied for the chinese top domain norwegian domain name. The mail claims they thought this was strange, as there already is a norwegian domain with this name, and that they wanted to give me 7 days to claim this domain name for myself.
While this is awfully considerate of the chinese registrar, it is – of course – a scam. And a pretty legal one too. While it might have been interesting to get a chinese top level domain name if I was planning on doing business in China, I would no doubt have considered this myself a long time ago. This scare tactic should alert no one.
Here are some more articles about the same scam tactics.
- .ASIA domain name scams still going strong
- Domain registration scam in China
- The domain game: Anatomy of a Chinese scam
And here is the mail in full:
(Letter to the President or Brand Owner, thanks)
Dear President,
We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on May 2,2013 that a company which self-styled”Qol asia Investment Ltd”were applying to register”bareform”as their Brand Name and some domain names through our firm.
Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for”Qol asia Investment Ltd”.Looking forward to your prompt reply.
Best Regards,
David Zhao
Tel:+86.551/63434624||Fax:+86.551/63434924
Address:No.650 HuiZhou Ave,Hefei,Anhui,China