Two weeks ago I received this unexpected email:
Subject: moonofalabama
From: Albert Liu <albert@china*******.org>
Date: 9/3/2022, 3:56 PM
To: moonofa <moonofa@aol.com>(If you are NOT CEO, please kindly forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. If you believe this has been sent to you in error, please ignore it. Thanks)
Dear CEO, This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration in China. On September 3, 2022, we received an application from Hongfeng Ltd requested “moonofalabama” as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names (moonofalabama.cn, moonofalabama.com.cn, moonofalabama.net.cn, moonofalabama.org.cn). But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it’s necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your business partner in China?
Best Regards
Albert Liu | Service & Operations Manager
China Registry (Head Office)
As I have been on the Internet for 30+ years I found this funny and was happy to play my role in it.
I wrote back to Mr. Liu, expressing my serious concern that some company would use Moon of Alabama domains to then possibly scrap off my content and to put advertisements around it:
Hongfeng Ltd will presumably copy content from my site to reproduce it for profit under similar named Chinese domain.
While I can not prevent this it is not good for the globally recognized name of my blog.
I ask you, if possible, to not give those domain to Hongfeng Ltd.
If I can acquire them please let me know your conditions.
Thank you for informing me of the issue.
A day later I received an email from a different sender:
Subject: moonofalabama CN domains and internet keyword “moonofalabama”
From: Zhihai Ning <zhihaining@vip.****.com>
Date: 9/5/2022, 11:21 AM
To: MoonofA <MoonofA@aol.com>To whom it concerns,
We will register the China domain names “moonofalabama.cn” “moonofalabama.com.cn” “moonofalabama.net.cn” “moonofalabama.org.cn” and internet keyword “moonofalabama” and have submiƩed our applicaƟon. We are waiƟng for Mr. Albert Liu’s approval. These CN domains and internet keyword are very important for us to promote our business in China. Although Mr. Albert Liu advised us to change another name, we will persist in this name.Kind regards
Zhihai Ning
I responded to Mr. Ning, the bad guy in this game, and copied Mr. Liu, the good one. I again expressed my concern and asked Mr. Ning to use different domain names. I again offered to register those domains in my name and to keep them away from his competition.
The good guy promptly wrote back and said that he had decided to wait a few days with the domain registration to see if I wanted to purchase those names. I would need to apply for them.
I asked for an application form and prices and received those. They were quite hefty:
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$140 per year for the ‘internet keyword’ “moonofalabama”, whatever that may be, plus $38.80 per year for each of those domain names. The minimum registration period was five years!
I filled out the application form and sent it back. I then received an invoice.
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A total of €1,481.80 for the registration of domain names that no one will ever use to reach this website. Plus an ‘internet keyword’ that most people in China will probably not even know how to spell or type.
I of course have no intention to ever pay such a bill. But others did. I know of several marketing departments which have fallen for that scam.
The trick has been known for many, many years:
For several years, Asian companies have been pressuring firms to register identical domain names in Asian Top-Level-Domains (TLDs). It is a kind of scam called “slamming”, and is an illegal practice to mislead firms in order to sell them unsolicited services.
The slamming scam always begins with an email, written in English and addressed to the CEO of the targeted company. The hustler tries to contact the manager who is often ignorant of the rules related to domain names.
They present themselves as accredited Asian registrars, mainly in China. This unknown third party notifies the firm that one of their clients wants to register domain names containing the trademark of the target of the scam.
The eager Asian “registrar” realized that the targeted firm owns the rights to the domain names in question. For “ethical” reasons, the Asian provider kindly offers to register the domain in the name of the target instead of for their “client”. The prices are often prohibitive. The greedy scammer threatens to proceed with the initial domain registration request if the rights holder does not purchase the domain names within seven to fifteen days.
About 200 mostly Chinese companies exits for solely this kind of ‘business’. Shanghai YG Co., Ltd., which tried to ‘slam’ me, is among them.
I should probably be proud that it thought that Moon of Alabama would be a worthwhile target.