Chinese Domain Name Scam

I have received enough client inquiries about Chinese domain registrars sending scam emails like the one below that I think it is worth a post. This is an attempt to get you to register one or more domain names you likely don't need. My recommendation is treat these messages as spam, hit the delete key. Don't reply.

-----Original Message-----
From: johnny.li
Sent: 25 June 2008 13:11
To: sales
Subject: My Client's Name,Domains Name

Jun 25, 2008

My Client's Name
Domains Name



Dear Sir/Madam

We are Beijing Anwins Network Service Co., Ltd which is the domain name register center in China. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “myclientsdomainname” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Jun24, 2008. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Kind Regards


Johnny.li



Tel:+86-10- 62961631(ext.8015）

Fax: +86-10-62968871

Landscape Design Galway Ireland

Addendum to this post on September 11: I am eating crow on my judgment of Fabian, perhaps aka Paul Kelly. He hasn't paid me for the work we have done and has stopped communicating by email, doesn't answer the phone, etc. So much for trust.

=====

There's a good lesson to be learned from my new friend and client, Fabian Kelly, who is a landscape architect in Tuam, Galway, Ireland. When you register a domain name or have someone like me register one for you, make sure that the domain name is registered in YOUR name and that you are the registrant with access to and control of the domain account.

Fabian hired a local Ireland web designer to create a website for him. The designer registered the domain name in his name, not Fabian's. What was supposed to be a Euro 600-800 project all of a sudden turned into a Euro 2,000 project for a not very good website with only half a dozen pages of content (written by Fabian). An Irish standoff resulted. The Irish web designer changed the names of the people in the website, changed the phone number and rerouted the contact form away from Fabian's email address. Highway robbery is universally unpopular?

Fortunately for me the standoff resulted in Fabian looking around Ireland for a web designer who knows SEO and not finding anyone suitable to him, he searched here and found my website. We found a suitable domain name that was previously registered with a clean history, Fabian registered it in HIS name and opened a hosting account in Ireland (Ireland only website search on google.ie is important to his business) and in about a week we have put the start of a new website online. We have lots of new content to add but we are off to a better start than the old website.

Moral to the story: make sure you own your domain name, and, do business with people you can trust.

Luck of the Irish,

Ron Castle

Ergonomic Lifting Equipment Website

My friends and clients at Ergonomic Partners in St. Louis are ergonomic material handling specialists who do a great job for their customers.

They have also been doing a good job with their website, building a good base of content with page targets based on search phrase research, enough page copy to earn rankings, photos and videos named properly, frequent content updates, structurally correct and with perhaps one of the best blogs on the Internet about ergonomic subjects.

Most industrial websites, once they are created, take on the "mission accomplished" mantra now made infamous by the Decider.

Ergonomic Partners have excelled with their website because of their keeping on with what it takes to be successful, passing up many competitors. Way to go Matt and Tim.

Cheers,

Ron Castle