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I received an email from Acute Domains pointing out that they have been asked to register multiple domain extensions for a domain similar to my own, including the domain extension 'mobi'.  They go on to say that after checking, they found that these names were similar to mine and under their fair usage policy, are obliged to offer me first refusal.  When I asked what the names were, they listed 7 names, all exactly like mine save for the extensions.  It took me a while to work it out, but it seems clear that this a simple marketing ploy to get me to buy extensions which I don't really need or want, to forestall some unknown other from getting a  name just like my own.

Has anyone else seen this?

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By Alonicus
30th Apr 2014 13:55

I get lots of emails like this, often from "businesses" purporting to be official or semi-official registrars in China.  They'll either register a whole bunch of domains on your behalf at a ridiculously inflated cost, or take your money for doing nothing, or just plain steal your credit card details. 

Add them to your spam list, and whatever you do don't reply in any way, because then they'll know they've got a "live" email address and sell it to hundreds of other scammers.  The latest twist is for their emails to ask for delivery, read and/or deleted receipts, in the hope that you'll automatically hit the "yes" button out of habit, which again confirms your email address is live.  Another one to watch out for is where scammers send meeting requests through, which add themselves to your calendar if you're using Outlook or a similarly full-featured email client.  Check your settings; in most cases declining or deleting the request either from email or within calendar will send a notification to the originator.

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By Mark_NW
30th Apr 2014 14:08

Me too

I have had similar emails which at first concerned me because the domains it was referring to were very specific and I couldn't think why anyone would want to register a similar name. No problem with that of course but it made me wonder why. Soon sussed it was a ruse and ever since have ignored similar emails. Best advice I would give is if you want to protect your domain name is to buy the extensions you want at the time of the original purchase even if you don't use them initially. However, given that new extensions are being released all the time eg .uk and .london if you go down that path it could end up quite expensive. For example I saw earlier today accountants.london is £1,005 for one year!

Sorry - moving slightly off the original query.

Regards
Mark 

 

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By megtek
02nd May 2014 13:56

6 clients got this email within a couple of days of each other

I manage websites for around 150 clients - and had 6 clients contact me about receiving this spam email for their respective domain names, within a couple of days or so of each other - so it looks as though this spam was pretty widespread - I told them it was highly likely to be a scam and to just delete the email and not to contact the company in question.

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