Recently I received an email I thought would make me rich.
It was from a domain registration company – claiming to be authorised by the Chinese government – informing me that a certain Chinese company was interested in applying for various permutations of my www.youngupstarts.com domain. It inquired if I had trademarked the name – and if I did, would I dispute the other company from registering those names.
Woot! Maybe I could sell the domain name for a tidy sum of money!
When I finally did reply them that no, I didn’t trademark it and that the other company was free to apply as they please, they urged me to register instead for those domains during the “dispute period” before I lost the rights. And of course, the registration company would be more than happy to help me obtain them on my behalf.
Alarm bells started to go off in my head.
Suspicious, I replied again twice to say that that I wasn’t interested at all, and they dropped the matter. Or so I thought. Then out of the blue, I received yet another email from them, virtually identical to the first one I got from them and repeating the same offer.
Now I believe the other company never existed in the first place, and that it was just a scam to get me to register for all the other domains. It infuriates me to know that there are companies out there who employ such tactics for their own selfish financial ends.
I think it’s a dastardly and dispicable way to do business.
