How To Spot A Chinese Domain Name Scam

[steve2470]

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/spot-chinese-domain-name-scam/

If I offered you a way to protect your car from ever getting stolen, or your house from ever getting broken into, would you pay me for it? Lots of people would — for many people, their brand is just as important as anything else. This is why Chinese domain name scams have become so popular, and so successful.

Chinese domain name scams are rampant. In a little bit, I’ll explain exactly what these scams are, but first it’s more important to understand what started them. The effort to get businesses to register for Asian domains to “protect the brand” has been ongoing for many years. It appears this became a phenomenon as early as 2006. But it has accelerated within the past year, after the CNNIC registry announced that the Chinese .CN domains were public.

While previously (since September 3rd, 2012) , you had to submit identifying documents and other personal information to register a Chinese domain; as of July 9th, 2013, those rules changed. You can now register a .CN domain as easily as any other domain, regardless of where in the world you do business. This means there’s a bit of a CN domain registration gold rush at the moment.

After these policy changes, the effort to get businesses outside of China to register .CN domain names took on a life all its own. Today, there is a massive proliferation of entities in the Asia region who are contacting unsuspecting small and large businesses across the world to register Asian domains in order to “protect the brand”. This scam targets business owners who are uneducated regarding the domain name registration process.