Friday 8 August 2008

Dear "One born every minute Co.,Ltd"

Working in a company that's spread around the world, with thousands of domain names under our control, we're not immune to the occassional registration spammer from some internet cafe in the Far East.

Most of them in the same format...

Dear [insert any old name here],

We received a formal application from a company who is called AoMeiXin Investment Co.,Ltd are applying to register "[insert domain we've picked up using a whois bot]" as their domain name and Internet keyword in China and also in Asia on August 6, 2008. During our auditing procedure we find out that the alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd has no trade mark, brand nor patent even similar to that word. As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect the alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd to be a domain grabber. Hence we need you confirmation for two things,
First of all, whether this alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd is your business partner or distributor in China.
Secondly, whether you are interested in registering these domains. (The alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd will be entitled to obtain a domain not needed by original trademark owner.)
If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate dept.
This is a letter for confirmation. If the mentioned third party is your business partner or distributor in China please DO NOT reply. We will automatically confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure.

Bst Rgs
Mark Li

Registration Commissioner
Tel: +0086-10-82771675-602 +0086-10-82772510-602
Fax: +0086-10-82771640
Email:
mark@bj-hkzc.com.cn
Http://www.bj-hk.com


The most annoying thing about these people is that they just seem to use the same email template, modify a few bits and pieces, and send it out ad nauseam. They all even share same grammatical and spelling mistakes. Personally, I find it slightly offensive that they think I'd be stupid enough not to notice....

Some fun stuff here about this http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/04/19/chinese-domain-scam/ In fact, there's lots of fun stuff on all sorts of forums on the interweb - just Google it.

I've been getting 2 or 3 a week now from our business around the Group, and our legal teams have drafted up a rather pithy email response which we send out. See, lawyers *do* have a reason to be on this earth after all.

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