There's a domain registration scam victimizing Saudi businesses. Please spread the word about it so the fraudsters don't come out on top. What happens is that an email, such as the one below, arrives at the Saudi company: “(Letter to the President or Brand Owner, thanks) Dear Sir/Madam, We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on September 20, 2013 that a company claimed “Qtnk Ltd” were applying to register your company name as their Brand Name and some domain names through our firm. Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the names 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 authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within seven workadays, so that we could handle this issue better. After the deadline we will unconditionally finish the registration for “Qtnk Ltd.” Looking forward to your prompt reply.” Naturally, Saudi companies reply by advising that they did not authorize the domain registration and that's when the moneymaking scheme goes into high gear. Another email arrives stating: “We had discussed the case about disputing your company's domain names. You have never registered these domain names, and I told you that the domain name registration is open. The dispute period will come soon. If your company does not register these domain names, we will finish aforesaid company's registration within two work days. That company will become the legal owner of these domain names in the world. We had notified you, so we are not responsible for any dispute question about intellectual property right and trademark after they succeed in registration. If you have any questions, please contact us within two work days.” Christopher Hofman Laursen at the European Domain Centre urges Saudi companies to ignore these emails. The domain registrar he represents is actively fighting these criminals. At the European Domain Centre site is published a collection of names and emails linked to the Chinese domain registrar scam. Hofman Laursen requests that if any company receives such an email to forward it to [email protected] so they can make public the fraudster's name and email and track the global movements of this scam. The European Domain Centre has found that the domain names that the Asian Domain Registration Service claims are about to be registered are never registered unless the company being scammed pays for the registration. Even worse, too often companies pay and then find that the URL never is registered to them and the scammer disappears with the funds. Hofman Laursen advises that if for any reason a company does want to register a Chinese URL, they should do so through their normal registrar.
