Phishing Scam – Intellectual Property Rights Scam

For those of you who are now the proud owners of your own website domains, there comes with it a whole new level of spam.  It’s important to be on your guard for seemingly legitimate requests or inquiries, especially in a field that is new to you and in a “language” that may be unfamiliar to you, but that may be phishing scams.

A phishing scam is a legitimate-looking request from a company or individual that is not legitimate, requesting personal and financial information from you that will be used in nefarious ways.  Many of these scams, in the form of emails, comes complete with the a legitimate company’s logo, colors and other distinguishing details, but which ultimately direct you to a site that is completely unrelated to the legitimate business.

Many of the simpler scams are clever and deceptive, but can be rejected by knowing that no financial or governmental agency will ever send you an email with a link to update your personal or financial information.  Never, ever, ever!  They may send you an email asking you to go to their official site, but never, ever send you a link to do that.

 Some of these new scams, however, are clever in that they are not asking you so much for personal information as they are asking you a question that seems legit but still requires you to contact them on a matter that is confusing.  In this case, a “company” (So far it’s been AsiaDNR, Auditing Department) sends an email stating that another company has applied for the registration of a bunch of domains with the same domain name as your, but with different extensions, such as .uk, .asia, .tw, etc.  They are “afraid” of trademark and domain infringement and want you to contact them if you do not know the company that is trying to buy up all these domains.

In a nutshell, they want you to contact them so they can sell you the remaining domains.  Also, you’ll forever be in their database for future, prolific spam, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

If you should get one of these emails, and your trusty webmaster is not immediately available, please do a google search on some of the keywords in the email, or on the subject line.  This will, at least, bring you to alternate opinions of the situation, and perhaps keep you from responding posthaste.

One good blog on this can be found at They Scammed My Man!  While my anecdotes run only to taking the time to explain to my clients that legal action is not pending, this guy has a little fun with his client, who is also a friend.

Hope this has been of service!


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