Andre Garrigo

  1. Yet Another Domain Name Extortion Scam

    From Marco.org:

    I got this email last week:

    Subject: About Internet Intellectual Property Issue

    Dear CEO,

    We are a leading internet solutions organization in Asia, and we have something urgent to confirm with you. Yesterday we received a formal application from a company called ” Varmer Investment Co., Ltd “. They were trying to apply for ” instapaper ” as Brand Name and following Domain Names through our organization:

    instapaper.asia
    instapaper.cn
    instapaper.com.cn
    instapaper.com.hk
    instapaper.com.tw
    instapaper.hk
    instapaper.in
    instapaper.net.cn
    instapaper.org.cn
    instapaper.tw

    After our initial examination, we found that the Brand Name and Domain Names above are similar to yours. These days we have been dealing with it. Now we hope to get your affirmation. If your company did not authorize the aforesaid company to register these, please contact us as soon as possible.

    In addition, we hereby declare that time limit for this issue is 7 workdays. If your company don’t respond within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by Varmer Investment Co., Ltd.

    Best Regards,
    Beck Chan
    Senior Examinant

    It’s a scam.

    I almost fell for it and bought a few of the domains, but I’m glad I didn’t. Hopefully other people will search Google and find one of these posts before they go through with it.

    Well let’s be honest here, what utility will Beck Chan receive from sending this cautionary email? Some good karma? I don’t think so.

    The only utility Beck Chan will receive from sending this email is that of which you offer up. In other words, she wants your money. This is as blatant of an extortion scam as I have seen, and yet we all seem to fall for them at one point or another. 

    (Source: marco)

    1. andre3k1 reblogged this from marco and added:
      Well let’s be honest here, what utility will Beck Chan receive from sending this cautionary email? Some good karma? I...
    2. godrja reblogged this from marco
    3. dalasverdugo said: Hah, I’ve been getting those emails for Vimeo ever since I started there. I’m glad you actually found out what happens when you reply. I’ve always just trashed them.
    4. mathowie reblogged this from marco and added:
      Same thing happened to me a couple months back....only emailed back once
    5. shianux reblogged this from marco
    6. jez-burrows said: Got this exact email a couple of months ago, except instead of ‘Brand Name’, they called them ‘Internet Keywords’.
    7. jonadair reblogged this from marco and added:
      way to my team. Pretty much...wording. Don’t get scammed, people!
    8. datainsightsideas reblogged this from marco and added:
      months ago. We passed on...seemed pretty fishy.
    9. akajimmy reblogged this from marco
    10. luclatulippe said: I got this recently too, same people. My initial reaction was the same, I thanked them, said no I didn’t apply to register, blah blah. Then the sales pitch. GRRR. My second reply wasn’t as nice as the first one.
    11. pakornw reblogged this from marco
    12. gleuch said: yah, get one of those every few weeks at Rocketboom. always the same email, different Chinese company name and contact person.
    13. tj said: Even better when you realize that there’s a huge portion of the population who will always just go to Google “instapaper” and go to whatever shows up there. Unless they start to use autocomplete in which case they’ll type “insta” and then hit ENTER.
    14. willw said: I also got this email for one of my domains (littlepixels.org).
    15. marco posted this