You tell me–if I got an email that said this:
We are Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited which is the domain name register center in Asia. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “punctualityrules” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Dec 3, 2008. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.
Is that something I should worry about? What does it mean to me, here in the US?
Anyone?
Edited to add: Ah ha! I knew it! This is a scam. (Thanks, Chris.)
I would not let this demand for money concern me, nor would I respond to it. Rather I would put them on my blocked senders list immediately. That way you will not know what they will promised to do to you next. No knowledge is good in this case. Also, by doing this, you will avoid becoming upset for no reason.
I have been involved in international trade for many years. I recently ceased trading with anyone or company located in Communist Red China. Green people, red people, yellow people, and white people; they all have the same blood flowing in their veins. It is culture that makes the difference.
I have learned from long experience that communist cultures and other atheistic cultures breed people who have no qualms about lying or cheating. They learn early on that lying is better any day than dying a torturous death at the hands of the omnipresent government.
Should you meet the demand for money made by this company, located in communist Hong Kong, be advised that they will gladly take your money and then do whatever they choose, as if you had never sent them a dime.
These people have no power over you and you certainly have no power over them. If Microsoft can’t defeat these people in communist China, then who are you for them to be afraid of when you come after them.
Take care and skip the blackmail payment.
Lawrence
Technically, they haven’t asked for any money (yet), and yes, my first thought was that this was some, weird variation on that Nigerian bank scam … but it doesn’t hurt to check!
Deb,
The mail doesn’t mention the top level domain in which the name is to be registered. Your domain is in the .com domain, but somebody else can register punctualityrules.hk, or .fr, or .net, or .whatever.
I’m no expert on trademark rules, but I think you can protect your punctualityrules brand by contacting the trademark authorities. This is obviously a paying service.
The company with which you registered punctualityrules.com should be able to advise you on this issue. I’d contact them first, rather than the Hong Kong registrar.
There is no such thing as trademark protection in China. For example: China has many, many millions of copies of Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003, and, they have a presence there, Microsoft is powerless to force this issue. Many of the counterfeit copies are owned by the Chinese government. Recently the government agreed to pay Microsoft something like $5.00 a copy (sorry, I forget the actual dollar amount) for all or at least many of the copies the government owns. Isn’t that just too, too nice of them.
In China you can buy all the Nokia phones, iPODs, and anything else you can think of that is a proprietary product, for pennies on the dollar. In most cases you can buy these products directly from the factories making the products under license for sale only to the patent owning company. That is the Chinese version of free trade.
Many families in China have gone to the courts in the past few years, hoping to bring suit against the companies that made milk products that killed their babies.
The substance in the milk products that killed the babies was Melamine. It was used to extend milk because it was cheaper than milk and had little or no taste.
The Chinese judges refused to hear the suits because the Chinese is more concerned with growing their GNP than protecting their citizenry–however small the citizen may be. Anyone there should have known that those lawsuits were doomed . GNP is Priority One in China.
What you are facing, Deb, is not anything like the Nigerian bank scam. These people in Hong Kong are simply phishing for money. They didn’t ask for any yet? Don’t worry. They will if and when they can get you working with them to solve this fake problem they have dreamed up.
There will be many more scams coming out of China as their economy sinks. They are facing a very big dilemma there. Many of their factories have shutdown or have cut back 60% to 80% on production. You should consider yourself special since you are one of the first targets to be selected. (Sick; I know. [Am I right in using a semicolon there?)
My original advice above still holds. Stop all communications with them , forget you ever heard from them, and sleep well tonight.
Lawrence
Deb,
My clients get these kinds of e-mails periodically. As Lawrence says, just ignore it. Even if someone registered punctualityrules.TDLforsomeforeigncountry, that wouldn’t likely make any difference to you. They’re just trying to get you to register the domain with them.
Another scam that’s closer to home is a US company that sends mails that look like invoices for domain registration renewals. I always register my clients’ domain names and manage the accounts for them, and I just pass through the registration fee with no profit. That’s 10.95/year—this scam company charges something like $85/year! One of my clients paid the “invoice” to renew the domain and had a heck of a time getting their money back. Fortunately, the others have called me and asked if they’re supposed to pay. Even my church got what the treasurer thought was a bill. The only reason he didn’t pay it was because I donate the hosting and domain registration so he knew they shouldn’t get a bill.
If you manage your own registration, you won’t be affected by this scam, but if you do it through a third party, that’s another one to watch for.
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Age of domain is really vital in the eyes of Google and since your domain is old one so any new domain will not create any kind of burden. One more point is you have .com domain and this doamin can be easily crawled by Google instead of earlier one so do not worry.
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Sounds like a whole lot of BS to me and it is the perfect subject matter for my load of BS blog. If I had received that mail I would consider it spam and send it straight to the garbage pile.
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