I received an email from WorldWideNetwork.asia purporting that someone by the name of Peter Alldis was attempting to register my name with a .cn and .asia top level domain (TLD) name. Because they discovered that a janleow.com exist in the internet, they would like to offer the chance to register .cn and .asia first to safeguard my interest for internet brand, trademarks and/or internet intellectual property rights protection.
I find it odd that someone would want to hijack and register my name considering that I’m not famous nor am I a celebrity. So why would someone want to cyber-squat using my name?
So I tried to search as much info about this guy Peter Alldis but couldn’t find out much as it is a name that many people had; though there was one search where this name came out as a potential spammer. But this was perhaps coincidental.
I tried to do other search about internet branding and finally found one post in TechRepublic.com
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=261209&start=0
It was posted in April 2008, and some people have replied about it. Turned out there were others who were offered this option to pre-register their company internet brand/trademarks before it was taken up by someone else. The company that was offering the internet intellectual property right protection was called Merit Technological Development. There was another post too and it mentioned Daisy Ren (AsiaDNR) who also approached another company to quickly register 3 domains before another firm registers it. In the end the post regarded such request as scams to sign up for internet domains by making people worried about protecting their internet brand and trademarks.
When I inquired to WorldWideNetwork how much to register an .asia domain, they said it would cost US$74 per year, which sounds very expensive. A quick check with GoDaddy.com and Domain.com says that you can register an .asia domain for US$19.90. However other domain registrar may charge higher, some as high as US$100!
After thinking about it, the TechRepublic.com posts may well be correct that this may be a scam or it could be these registrar companies using a scare tactic to induce companies or people to register the .cn and .asia extension.
Personally I have no use for a .cn China domain, and an .asia isn’t very useful to me either. If I really wanted to, I could of course go register with GoDaddy.com or Domain.com which charges cheaper. Also why is there a need to warn me first? If anybody wants to cyber-squat my name they could just easily go and register; since that they think there is the off-chance of some potential that somehow one day I may become famous or become a celebrity and make tons of mullah by sitting on my name and make me pay them handsomely to get my name back!
I think I will go with the TechRepublic.com post idea and do nothing about registering .cn/.asia. These TLDs aren’t very popular not to mention expensive and not too useful for me. Mind you, if I have to register for every extension available online I think I will become a pauper!
Update: 20/4/2009
Uh, uh. Someone actually bought the janleow.cn domain but not the janleow.asia domain. Maybe that one may take longer to register? the janleow.cn IP is located in Beijing, China. Now, what are they up to…?
Update: 10/5/2009
janleow.asia is still available. Therefore this is just a total scam. Can safely ignore such scare tactic letter. Maybe my mandarin sucks or what, the .cn extension looks like an error message with a blank page…
Here is their message to me in full:
date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Name: Chars Lau
mailfrom: chars@worldwidenetwork.asia
City: Hong Kong
Country: China
janleow dispute of domain name We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.On Apr 9th, 2009, we received an application formally, one person named “Peter Alldis” wanted to applied for the Internet brand “janleow” and some domain names through our body. During our preliminary investigation,we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned “Peter Alldis” to register these domain names through us or not? Or is “Peter Alldis” your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP. In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 10 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the application of ” Peter Alldis”.Thank you for your cooperate. T:00852-31152295 F:00852-30723223
No worry, it is most likely a s.c.a.m
I got the same email for my company on the 9th April 2009 claiming Peter Alldis is trying to register on the 10th of April 2009. Did a whois query on them I found out that the website was registered on the same 9th of April 2009. These guys are just trying to make some $$$
Also be careful not to visit these sites as theymay have malicious scripts running which may infect your PC once you visit their site. Any siteadvisor would not have scanned their site as yet since they have not been registered for long.
I have received exactly the same e-mail.
I tried to research this scam and came accros your blog, because I was trying to lookup the Peter Alldis character.
I run the check on the website http://www.samspade.org and found listed the address as Post Office only with instruction to refuse any posted mail anyway. based on phone number they are located in Denmark (+45), which is an obvious lie.
I received the same email, but not for my name, but actually for our company. I did the same search for Peter Alldis. This certainly appears to be a SCAM!
My company received the same e-mail offering us “first dibs” on .asia and .cn domain names similar to our company name before Peter Alldis got his turn.
It’s clearly as scam (or high-pressure sales technique: quick, buy this shit you don’t need, you won’t get another chance!), though, as we _already_ own the domains in question, and have done for years.
This “Peter Alldis” name seem to be getting infamous. Very likely is just a fake name used for this scam purpose. Anyway, somebody did register the .cn extension in Beijing. It’s just a blank page now. If he is planning to rip off $$$ from me, it is going to be a long, long wait…
This is the email:
Dear Manager,
We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.
On May 6, 2009, we received an application formally, one person named “Peter Alldis” wanted to applied for the domain names (macrorecruitment.asia macrorecruitment.hk macrorecruitment.in macrorecruitment.tw macrorecruitment.sg ) and internet brand (macrorecruitment) through our body.
During our preliminary investigation,we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned “Peter Alldis” to register these domain names through us or not? Or is “Peter Alldis” your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.
In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the application of ” Peter Alldis”.
Thank you for your cooperate.
This is the response i get:
this is their reply:
Dear Daryl Keeley,
Thank you for your reply. Now I confirm that Peter Alldis doesn’t belong to your company. But you must know domain name register takes openly, it is equal for everyone to register. We follow the basis “first come, first serve.” So we have no right to prevent Peter Alldis’ application. Nowadays more and more cybersquatters online want to register quantities of domains, then they will resell these domains for another company or another guy by high prices. Then they can earn high profits. Because it is related to your company’s name and trademarks. So you have the priority rights to register in order to prevent other guy from abusing your trademarks.
If you have business in Asia or you want to develop business in Asia in the near future, so I think these domain names are very important for you! Of course, each company has their own idea. If you don’t think their application will affect your company, you can give up, we will finish their registration. But if you think these domain names are useful for your company, we can send an application form to you and help you register these within dispute period. This is the only way to prevent domain name grab. Pls let us know your decision soon, so that we can handle the next step. Peter Alldis wants to register the following domain names and internet brand.
Domain Names
macrorecruitment.asia
macrorecruitment.hk
macrorecruitment.in
macrorecruitment.tw
macrorecruitment.sg
Internet Brand
macrorecruitment
Hi – we have recieved the same email for our company – since reading all your comments we will be ignoring the email about it too!
Thanks
Same here.
Famous character peter aldiss, wanted to register our company name which by the way is in mexico, and our name is in spanish no need for asia. of course.
I found this discussion, searching for the accuracy of this threat, at least I can see it is costing time and certain stress. Hope this is not going to be a trend follow by other companies.
hmmmm… the letter is an exact copy that I received (except for the domain names of course). And I’m getting very high hit rates for this page, which means this letter must have been sent out everywhere and going on very strongly recently.
I cannot thank you enough for having this on your blog and to all who responded. It helped to solidify my suspicions about the validity of theis claim. We have gotten things like this in the past but not quite so convincingly put together. Thanks again!
Same BS here. I operate out of Perth Western Australia. Same basic email to which I replied “Tell me more about Peter Alldis”. Based on your blog (Found by search pete’s name) I will ignore next comms. My www has been up and running since 2004 I have no real need of an asian registry. Another 20 mins wasted!!!!
I received the same message, but with my company’s domain name, on May 14, 2009. I appreciate your maintaining this blog as it has been very helpful to me. I will not respond to Worldwide. Thanks again.
Greetings from Perth, I am a registered migration agent operating from Perth Western Australia and we have also received the same email this morning. Seems to be an effective marketing ploy but of course everyone wants to protect their www.
Thank you for all the comments. I got the same “Peter Alldis” email for my company and luckily I checked to see if it was a scam before I replied. I will just ignore it now.
Dear President,
Hello! Sorry to trouble you!
We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name
registration and internet Intellectual property right protection in Asia.
On the July 12, 2009, we received an application formally from Subio Investment Corp,who applied for the
Internet Brand” xxx”
and some domain names relevant to this trademark from our organization.
According to our procedures and in order to protect your intellectual property rights, we need to send this email to the original company for confirming the actual relationship with this company.If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other motivation to register these domain names and probably want to do some cybersquatting. Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
PS:If you are not in charge of this matter,please transfer this email to appropriate dept.
Have a nice day!
Best Regards,
Ivy Sung
——————————–
Tel: +852-3072 3948
Fax: +852-3072 3949
Email: Ivy.Sung{at}hkitos.net
Web: hkitos.com
Don’t trust them , they are cheater …once u transfer the $, they will not reply your email any more. They will charge you USD198/YEAR. Minimum 5 years contract. Sayonana..
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your prompt reply.
as I mentioned in my previous email. you can just register the Internet Brand”xxx”, in this way, we also reject the application of the third party. so we suggest you can just register the Internet brand “xxx”,
If you want to register and dispute this Internet Brand by yourself, You can do according to the followings procedures:
1. We send you the dispute application form.
2. You fill in the dispute application form and return it via email (scaned) or fax, we will file them, so that your company can check your company’s relevant registeration information about intellectual property rights in the internet.
3. After the dispute application form is confirmed to be valid, We will stop their application and put this Internet Brand on file.
4. We will send the invoice of payment to you.
5. You transfer the payment to us according to the Bank information on the invoice and fax the payment proof to us.
6. After getting the payment, we will issue you the certificate of it . Then you could use this Internet Brand smoothly.
Any questions ,please feel free to contact me.
Best Regards,
Ivy Sung
I got the same “subio investment corp” e-mail about our company.We are based in Bulgaria and never had any dealings in Asia.
Thank you for having this on your blog and very big THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to write about this scam.
Yup, my company got the same letter from Worldwide International Domain Registration about Peter Alldis wanting to register “some domain names” and our company name as a keyword (is it even possible to register a key word??). Sounded fishy, so I Googled Peter Alldis and was led here.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions!