Please Help - Domain registration .cn etc

[hexter]

I own a few domains for sake of argument lets call one

mydomain.com, in some cases I a aslo have the mydomain.ca locked in.

Recently for some domains I have been getting warning letters from CHINA no less that some other companies are trying to register

mydomain.cn
mydomain.info
mydomain.net
mydomain.?? and so on....

Should I concern myself with this.

I dont think I am up to paying for every MYDOMAIN.extension that exists....

Should I just ignore the emails???

I have locked up mydomain.mobi which gosh knows maybe one day may be worthwhile...

PLEASE help and soon - these Chinese guys are threatening that I will be TOO LATE in as little a 4 days.....

A side note: I paid 20 dollars to dnforums.com only to find I STILL CANT POST A QUESTION THERE.

Thanks in Advance.

Hexter

 

[cypherpunk]

.net might be worth registering, but not .cn and .info. Unless the site is commercial and you see yourself doing business in China or you think there's a serious potential for fraud (mostly ID theft), I have no idea why you should worry. Also, multiple messages with pressuring language should raise the scam flag. I owe my university $75 and they've only sent one email with moderately urgent language.

 

[Whisperwolf]

Quite a few companies make money this way, by telling you that business rivals are going to register similar sounding domains, or domains with the same name but different extensions.

Generally when you type in a word - for example terb - without any more of a web address than that, your browser will try .com first, then .net, then .(your county) - for us it would be .ca - then if none of those three extensions are valid web URLs it gives up and goes to its search page. Therefore the only really important extensions are those three.

Another scam I've seen is unsolicited email claiming "because I've got such and such an extension this gives me a claim on your extension" - this is not so. As long as you pay your domain fees promptly, nobody has any greater chance to 'steal' your domain if they have something registered with a different extension, no matter WHAT they say.

Finally, it's not uncommon if your site has plenty of traffic for psuedo-search engines to register different extensions in the hope someone will type the wrong thing and end up going to their pseudo-search engine instead. In the normal way of things this is not anything you generally need to worry about.

 

[l69norm]

There's a hugh scam on the Internet called "domain tasting" thats associated with click fraud. Don't be surprised if your .net is already taken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/10/click-fraud-up.html

 

[hexter]

.net might be worth registering, but not .cn and .info. Unless the site is commercial and you see yourself doing business in China or you think there's a serious potential for fraud (mostly ID theft), I have no idea why you should worry.

I worry because I am ignorant, and facing a threat to which you are ignorant about naturally causes one to worry.

My scam-detector did go off as soon as I read the compelling language. The threat wasn't overt it was along the lines like :

We told you so so if someone ends up with your "trademark" or IP its not our fault we are going ahead with the registration from the 3rd party (which as named).

Many thanks for the replies - I appreciated them ALL !

I am now not worrying and less ignorant.

I appreciated and read the wikipedia links as well.

Hexter

 

[cypherpunk]

We told you so so if someone ends up with your "trademark" or IP its not our fault we are going ahead with the registration from the 3rd party (which as named).

If you have a registered trademark, you have to defend it or the trademark may be subject to dilution and if it becomes diluted enough it becomes void. If you do have a registered trademark, you can still invoke it if you feel that yoursite.cn is going to be confused with your product/service. If this is what the warning consisted of, someone was probably just covering their ass as much as they were hoping you'd buy the domains.

 

[l69norm]

Realistically, if you are doing business targetted to the US or Canada, you only need :

mydomain.com/net/org/ca

.mobi as you suggest may also be worthwhile, but unless you're wanting to become a chinese business then why buy .cn? People aren't going to accidently type it in, and you're not trying to push your servic through google.cn are you?

That's a good point: instead of getting mydomain.cn, you might be better off getting the common misspellings such as midomain.com, mydomian.com, etc, etc.

 

[hexter]

More great points....

I spent 20 dollars here dnforum.com to get the same answers you guys gave me for FREE !!!! DAMN IT !!!

Thanks again...

Hex