Asia scammers try their hand at cyber squatting

A few of our customers have recently made us aware that that they have had official looking emails from Asian domain registrars. Basically the content of the emails centre around the domain registrar contacting you to let you know that they have had a request from a company to register domain names with the same as yours, but with Asian country domain name extensions.

They request that you contact them as the use of your business name in a non-australian domain name "may relate to the usufruct of brand name on the internet"

The first thing that should ring alarm bells is the use of the word 'usufruct' (which inceidentally means "the legal right to use and derive profit from or benefit from property which belongs to another"). Other than in complicated legal documents, where-else would you see that word used?

The other point that they use to try and scare you into contacting them is use of the phrase "the internet trademark". There is no such thing as "the internet trademark".

If you have received an email such as those outlined above, please delete them without giving them a second thought, and if you have any concerns over them, please feel free to give us at Searchsmart a call and we will help in any way we can.