Domain Name Scams in China

In the past two months we’ve had two phone calls from Chinese ISP and domain registrars telling us that some one wants to register a domain name that corresponds to or sounds like our company name in Chinese. They tell us that if we don’t agree we can stop this by paying them RMB 13,000. Yeah right! This is one big con. And it is not just some small operator - we’re getting calls from the major network backbone operators. They explain all this to my secretary (who knows nothing about DNS of course) and make it sounds like we must do something about it. Incredible. Thirteen thousand rumbas!

I don’t think there is anyone wanting to register a domain. I think they’re just going through the phone book making this up as they go along. Anyhoo, domains don’t have the value that they used to thanks to Google, Del.icio.us etc.