Beware of Scam Pertaining to Intellectual Property Rights

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Katherine Corkill on August 26, 2009 at 10:06pm

I have had many of these phish emails and basically they are wanting you to respond and then the harassment begins by them soliciting funds from you to protect your domain name.

Responding opens up a can of worms.... deleting it nothing happens. So ignore and delete....do not respond ever. No one is going to take your domain name in the states. If they want it in .hk then let them have it. If you are planning to have a division of your company overseas then when you register your domain name take the .com .net. org. ca. hk. or any other suffix then.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by IBN Member Nicole Chase on August 27, 2009 at 12:18am

Thank you for your feedback and advice. After doing some research, I did ignore and delete. Just as you said, I ran across a few people that responded and the harassment began.

It's great to have forums and blogs available to help police these types of activities!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by JoAnn Hines on August 27, 2009 at 3:25pm

I get these too all of the time. Basically all they want is your money.
It is a good exercise though to double check that all your essential domains are protected with top tier endings such as .net, .org, and even .biz.

If you think your domain name is something that other people might capitalize on then go ahead and protect them by securing the additional registrations. Its only $10 per and a wise investment to protect your intellectual property.

I own almost 400 packaging domains that I have secured to protect my brands. Its something you should consider as an investment not an expense.
Happy Packaging!
JoAnn Hines
Packaging Diva

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by dM, CEO on August 31, 2009 at 11:17pm

JoAnn,

Wow! 400! That must be some kind of record for Indies. I bet there are some pretty big Fortune 100 companies that don't even own that many domains. You go girl!

dM

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ria Zeinz on August 27, 2009 at 3:42pm

Great post!

I too have gotten several emails from them, with the email being identical, only the name is different- everyone from 'Erik' to 'Jeremy' to 'Paul' has contacted me.

What I found REALLY interesting is that my website is under construction, when you go to my site, there is a message saying the usual 'Under construction, check out our products at...' with links to our Etsy shops, etc. There is NO CONTACT INFO listed on my web page, nor any reference to a 'customer service' email, yet this company contacted me through the 'customerservice@" email address that I had set up but not posted anywhere.

Basically, they took a stab in the dark and figured most sites have a 'customerservice' email address, so they would send an email out and see what happened. A couple days later I got another email sent to my 'admin@' email address which again, is not posted anywhere, so they just guessed that it would work.

I immediately deleted the emails, and did make mention to it on the other business forums I go to. As was pointed out in the comments section of the previously posted link- it's an example of the internet policing itself; when we take the next step beyond just deleting the message from our inbox and try to spread the word to our fellow ecommerce colleagues, it only serves to shut the scammers down that much faster since the run out of victims.

Thanks for sharing & reminding me that a quick, simple post about what 'scammer' emails I recieve is all that is needed to help to spread the word and maybe even prevent someone from getting scammed!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christine White - Scandle LLC on August 27, 2009 at 3:45pm

Hi,

I've been getting these too. Never did research on them, just went on gut instinct. Is it me or does there seem to be more scams out there now days than ever? Wonder if the state of the economy is causing this. It's unfortunate that these people don't spend more time making a "legitimate" living like the rest of us!

Warm Regards,
Christine White-Stanton
940-239-7538
Scandle, LLC "A Candle Never Felt So Good"
http://www.scandlecandle.com/

*Winner The Best of Best Spa Tools & Accessories 2008- Skin, Inc. Magazine
*Winner of Best Candle 2008 Beauty Awards - H2O Magazine
*Finalist in the 2008 Fragrance Business Product of the Year Awards - GCI Magazine

Be A Scandle Affiliate: http://www.abodycandle.com/affiliate.php
Tweet With Me: http://twitter.com/ScandleCandle
Blog: http://naturalspabeauty.blogspot.com/
MySpace: www.myspace.com/scandlebodycandle
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scandle-Candle/173291740075
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheScandleCandle

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by IBN Member Nicole Chase on August 31, 2009 at 11:10am

I really appreciate everyone sharing their experiences as well as providing valuable input. The scammers are definitely persistent and I received this email a few hours ago:

Dear CEO & Principal

I have sent one email to you on Aug 26,2009. We did not receive your reply until now. I have been helping you in the whole course, but we need your cooperation. We don't hope these domain names and internet keyword to be registered under your unknown. So we sent email to inform your company to protect your interest. Do you mean that you want to give up the protect & registration? If so, we will sign the registration agreement with the third party. If you decide to register & protect these domain names and internet keyword, please let us know within 3 workdays.
Waiting for your further reply as soon as possible. If any question, do not hesitate to contact me.
Have a nice day !

Best Regards,
Eric
Auditing Department

**Needless to say, there are a few "red flags" that clearly indicate the scam nature of the email. For example, "We did not receive your reply until now." I actually never replied to any emails and have simply discarded them.

I'll be sure to keep everyone posted as I come across any additional info!

• ▶ Reply