A Scammer in the Shadows
I have some very important things to talk about, and I would like to share my experiences so no one else falls for this scam. A short time ago I received an email from domain company in China. At first I didn't see the email because it was thrown into my spam filter, but when I saw it I grew curious and looked. The company was called TAZ and the contact said his name was Frank. I'm not going to share his last name here but I doubt it was a real name he gave me anyway.
Frank claimed that another company was attempting to register eleven domains that were similar to mine. Domains like spiritfieldadventures.asia or .cn things like that, only there were eleven of them. TAZ asked me if I was associated with the other company "Cokhr Holdings ltd".
When I first read the email I was legitimately worried that someone was attempting to rip off my website. The email did look real and professional enough to fool me at a glance, at least at first. Looking back at it though I realize that it is obvious that something was off about it, but hindsight is 2020.
First off what domain registry company would inform you that another person or company was attempting to register a domain that's similar to yours. Secondly, why would anyone else want a domain like mine, it's just a title for a book series, the first book being 'The Spirit Field Adventures: Spark'. If you want to know more about that you can look it up. I always appreciate any support you can give me.
So, when I first read the email I grew worried and decided to reply. All I said was that I knew nothing of this other company and they did not have permission to use my domain name. Frank replied by giving me thanks for that confirmation and saying that they were concerned that the registration of these other domain names could negatively impact my brand. He said they stopped the application for the domain names and wanted to know if I planed on registering them first.
Now I don't know about you, but registering eleven new domain names that just had a different ending would be fairly expensive. I'm an author so I don't make lots of money and that would be a big waste since I only really need the one domain. So I told them that I wasn't going to register the domains, but I still wouldn't give this other company permission to use the domains or my brand name. It was at this time that I was starting to suspect that something was up. Though my initial suspicion was with the other company and not TAZ.
This time it took Frank almost a whole week to respond and his response was even weirder this time. Frank claimed that they hadn't received my email right away and that time was running out. He said that I would need to register the domains first if I thought they were important to my brand. If I didn't do that they would go ahead and approve the application right away.
So, this time I didn't respond right away. I started to do some digging instead. First I attempted to find TAZ's website online, but when I did a google search for them the first thing that came up was an article form the Guardian about online domain name scams. That basically explained everything. This whole thing was a scam to force me to pay lots of money for domains that would be of no use to me. Though, I'm a bad target for them to pick since I would never have paid this company for the domains even if I had never discovered that it was a scam. It would have been way to much money for no real value.
After I learned that it was a scam I decided to send another email. This time though, I decided to change things up a bit. When I was looking around for information about them earlier I also looked up the registration information for their website. It turns out they only registered the website for one year and it's going to expire on December 25th. So I jokingly asked if they needed any help choosing a new domain name at the end of the year, because their current domain just isn't working very well. After that I included a link to an article about scams and asked if they would like me to share the link to the blog you're currently reading.
That was about a month ago and they haven't gotten back to me at all. Also those domains never showed up anywhere, so I guess they jsut gave up after I refused to pay them.The whole situation lasted about two weeks. So, I guess I was able to waste their time at least and stop them from bugging and scamming other people. I'm glad I was able to waste their time and I hope this helps others from being scammed by them. Always remember to be careful who you talk to online and what you share with them.
