Scam ups the ante by pretending to be World Intellectual Property Organization.
The Trademark Domain Name Scam is upping the ante, now pretending to be an email sent from World Intellectual Property Organization.
In this scam, an entity that usually says it’s located in Asia says that someone has applied to register a number of domain names that include your “trademark” (really just the second level of one of your domain registrations). You can see an example of the scam emails here.
It’s an effective scam. I get more inquiries from smart business people about this particular scam than any other.
Now the scammers are upping the ante, sending the email with a return address @wipo-int.com. Wipo.int is World Intellectual Property Organization’s web site.
www.wipo-int.com does not resolve but is registered to “KS Network Solutions”. The email includes two attached graphics, one with a phone number to contact the scammer and one with the web address ks-register.com.
If you get one of these emails, just delete it or spam it. (Note to Google: create a button in Gmail to “report scam” in addition to the “report spam” button.)
Only moron can fall for this. That said, world is full of morons so they must have lots of biz
WIPO itself is a scam, so really this is a scam of scam.
Why should non-Americans panels with dubious credentials be able to take property away from
Americans?
about Asia… I hope that will be soon allowed to register an .asia also to non-asian residents… that could be also a very good business for domain registration companies
As usual, Jontee has it right.
I got the same email saying that some entity wants to register the attila name in other extensions. I played along asking for the buyers information so our legal department can further pursue them. They replied they can not release their customers information. I whois’d them and it shown a Shanghai company. I replied saying our lawyers in Shanghai will be in touch. They replied with a cocky email “come find me” as if they watched catch me if you can…
and what if the [trademark] is realy a trademark?
I had a moment of weakness for a couple of seconds, then I wrote in google “newz asia scam” – this site came up first.
They almost caught me 🙂
They have not only emailed me- they have called several times. The phone number on their emails do match the caller ID.
862133519109. I told “Tom”, who emailed and called me initially, about the concern for scams. He told me to research further since it was important to me to be incontrol of our international domain names.
He was very professional. It dismays me to see such seemingly nice people lie so…. 🙁
@ Robin – I had not yet heard of them calling people. Interesting.