Asian Domain Registration Scam: ntwifinetwork.com
May 29th, 2009All of the credit for this blog article goes to one of my clients who received this inquiry and did her own investigation to conclude it was a scam. This is apparently known as the “Asian Domain Registration Scam” and the company or person is attempting to trick people into registering domain names they don’t need. My client received an email from the NTWifiNetwork.com that claimed to be concerned that another person in Asia was trying to register the .com version of her domain as .cn (China), .hk (HongKong), .asia (Asia), etc. So if her business was bluewidgets.com, their was an alleged person trying to register bluewidgets.cn, bluewidgets.hk, and so forth, and the email was saying “hey, there’s someone else out there trying to register your domain name and if you don’t do anything in 5 days, we’ll process his application”. The email is posted below:
The email came from: Sunny with an address of [email protected]
To whom it may concern: 2009-5-27
We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
Last week we received a formal application submited by Justin Lin who
wanted to use the keyword “_[yourdomainnamehere]_” to register the Internet Brand
and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be
applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark.
We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with him. Because these
domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his
registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next
5 working days, we will approve his company’s application
In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax
,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.Yours sincerely
Sunny
Checking Department
Tel: 86 513 8532 2060
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email:[email protected]
Website: www.ntwifinetwork.com
Sounds plausible? What a nice thoughtful domain registration company to let someone know when another person tries to purchase domain names similar to theirs. Except it seems to be just a scam, an attempt to get you to register domain names you don’t need.
Here’s an article on this topic that my client found on ScamWarners.com. It’s the nearly identical email spam/scam except it’s from “Treey, Attorney at law of Legal Department”. Both emails are from ntwifinetwork.com.
Another article that discusses a similar scam attempt, but with a different company: Asia Domain Name Registration Limited. Here’s the article: Asia Domain Name Registration scam. In this case, the recipient of the email responded and was encouraged to pay between $140 - $840 for five years for each domain registration. Keep in mind domain registration is typically around $10 per year. So they were attempting to lure the email respondent into paying over 16 times more than the normal price for domain name that they didn’t need or want.
Here are some additional links that describe similar scam attempts:
Asia Domain Name Registration Limited - Scam
Asian Domain Name Fraud Warning
Asia Domain Name Registration scam
Be careful out there!
Jill--------------
J. Olkoski
Aldebaran Web Design, Seattle
Jill Olkoski has a BS in Engineering, a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Clinical Psychology. She delights in using her advanced technical and psychological skills to help small business owners develop cost-effective and successful websites.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Same thing happened to me. Luckily, I did some homework as well and asked an associate from Taiwan to investigate it further for me. Sunny is about to become very overcast.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Hi E.,
I literally laughed at your “overcast” reference. Very, very funny. And I’m very happy you avoided getting caught!
July 28th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I got it today. I responded I have to talk to our attorneys first.
Doesn’t anyone have a legitimate job anymore?
G
July 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Hi Gary,
It’s a great rhetorical question. Very glad you didn’t get caught!
November 29th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Just to let you know, this scam is still working. Just received a letter from “Alec Wong” from a Singapore Asian Domain registration service advising me a Tom Halstead Limited had registered for my domain name with the various country .coms.
It seems like a fraudulent way to get me to protect my domain name but my daughter said she thought that was illegal. I Googled and found your article. Thank you for your good work!
February 24th, 2011 at 6:46 am
Just had similar scam email, some details below. Looks like its still popular in Asia.
department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have to respond or risk losing domain.
Nonsense!!
April 27th, 2011 at 8:36 am
They’re still at it. Only it wasn’t “Sunny” today. This time it was “Jeff Wong”. . . Must be “Alec’s” brother. . . I figured it was a scam from the get-go, but do appreciate your blog post. Your comment as to them being a “nice thoughtful domain registration company” totally cracked me up!
May 25th, 2011 at 9:20 am
This scam is still out there.
We received an email yesterday. Almost word for word. The sad thing is — the only reason they would still be sending the emails is if they were still making money off of this scam.
Hope your blog helps others avoid falling for this scam.
Mahalo,
Kathy
May 25th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Unfortunately, you’re correct - they must be making money otherwise they would have stopped. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
July 29th, 2011 at 10:47 am
…and still it goes on.
“Dear President,
We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have something to confirm with you. …”
October 19th, 2011 at 10:42 am
They are still working the e-mail, this one is from Steve Wu:
“After our initial checking, we have 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 have authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you have not, 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 “TTU Int’l Co.”.
Best Regards,
Steve Wu”
October 21st, 2011 at 8:51 am
Got it! This time from John Wang, http://www.ygnetworkltd.com
I figured that it was a scam but this post confirmed it. Thank you!
November 8th, 2011 at 4:06 am
I received this today too. I just responded and said this was a mistake please do not change the domain. Is it ok to respond???
November 8th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
The only danger in responding, is they will probably spam you again. But nothing else I can see that would be bad.