I received an email via our Zero To Sixty Marketing blog’s contact form this morning that really caught my attention. It was from “Hong Kong Network service Company Limited, a domain name registration center in Asia” and except for some poor English usage, it looked legit. The email makes it sound as though there’s a trademark dispute over our domain name.
A quick Google search turned up over 1,000,000 results for the company name – the first several pages all looking legit. Adding the words “domain dispute” to my search changed the results significantly. This is a domain trademarking scam – and apparently rather an effective one.
There is no trademark dispute over our domain name. What they don’t disclose is that their goal is to frighten a business person into “protecting” their trademark by purchasing the overpriced .cn and .com.cn Chinese extensions of your domain. So don’t fall for it. Save yourself a headache and don’t even respond.
I’ve copied and pasted the email below. Several other versions using different company names are also used. The one common thread seems to be that they all originate in China.
Dear Sir/Madam,
We are Hong Kong Network service Company Limited, a domain name registration center in Asia.
Yesterday we received an application from another company for the domain names “zerotosixtymarketing” , but later we found your company is their original owner and this may involve your company name or trademark and this may cause confusion between your products and others’ , and bring about negative effect on your company.Therefore we decided to inform you of this and check out your attitude toward this matter. We would appreciate if you can spare some precious time to settle this issue.
Thank you for your cooperation and looking forwards to your early reply.
Best Regards,
Monica.Meng
Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited
Address: 19/F., First Block, New World Bldg.,
No.18 Quen Middle Road,
Zhonghuan,
Hong Kong
Tel: +852-31757931 (ext8023)
Fax: +852- 31757932
Email: Monica.meng@hk-nsc.org.cn
website: www.hknsc.hk
Related Domain Trademark Scam Articles:
Beware of Chinese Domain Names Fraud
I received that email as well, and my trademark attorney assured me that it was a scam. It’s really scary how effective such scams are….people can be so vulnerable whenever you insert any legal mumbo-jumbo into an email. Sad but true.
I also received this email and I couldn’t tell if it was fake or not but a quick search brought me here and to other sites.
Spammers are getting more effective, normally I don’t have to bat an eye lash before clicking delete.
Wow…. can you guys believe that this scam is still active and going on. I was contacted about my domain http://www.justvr.com but from a different company said to be located in Hong Kong called: TradmarkInfo H.K. Company LTD. After searching around I quickly associated it with a similar scam… them spammers… hate them!
I came across this post on Google after receiving a very similar email today, but from someone named ‘Mark Bell’.
Again, can’t believe this scame is still going around.
i received this email scam twice now and was going to respond.. well im just glad i googled it first! i bet there’s actually a lot of people who fall for it and buy the domians
Yep, still going on, in our case from eddie baker with the following message (included so people end up here), all seems legit at first glance (unusual in itself), with interesting spin of one word searches being registered.
We are a domain name registration center in Hongkong,mainly dealing with domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection. On Aug 20,2009 we received a formal application from a local company of your country who is applying to register some domain names with the keyword “NAME” and register it as their keyword. After investigation,we find that you are the original user of the keyword. As this refers to your company name or trade mark, and in order to avoid the confusion and dispute on the internet, we inform you and would like to know your ideas, if you agree about this issue, we will finish the third company’s registration, If you don’t agree the third company to register,
please inform me.looking forward to your reply.thanks for your understanding and cooperation.
Most countries in the third world never respects intellectual property rights. piracy is so rampant in asian countries.~”-
Thank you all for your comments. I’m amazed that this scam is still going on – and was really surprised to be contacted by this company’s legal department today. They ask that I delete this “malicious message” as it’s having a bad effect on their reputation.
So I guess it’s okay for the company to send out false emails to the masses, but no one’s supposed to call them on it.