The Shanghai Solicitation

(Does that title sound like the title of a Ludlum novel?)

While I was busy watching 24, someone sent me the following email at one of my other email addresses at a different domain (redactions mine):

Dear <domain-name>:

We are Shanghai Chooke Network Information Technology Co., Ltd, which is the domain name register center in China.I have something need to confirm with you.   
          
We have received an application formally,one company named “Shengteng (China) Investment Co.,Ltd” applies for the domain names(<several domain names listed here> etc.) ,and the Internet keyword(<domain>) on the internet January 12, 2009. We need to know the opinion of your company because the domain names and keyword may relate to the copyright of brand name on internet.

we would like to get the affirmation of your company,please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Kind Regards,

<name, phone, and email>
Shanghai Chooke Network Information Technology Co., Ltd
website: www.chooke.com.cn

It has the look and feel of a scam, doesn’t it? Surely a domain registrar could affort to have their message translated into proper English?

On the other hand, maybe the company is concerned I might give them trouble over the name, and they want to see if I’ll license it to them. Or maybe they were thinking of challenging me on the name and they wanted to see if I would put up a fight. I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to get a lawyer involved.

Still, it looked like a scam, even if they weren’t asking for any money. I figured I better Google it. A minute later, I had my answer, in the form of a blog post by David Ting. He received a similar message, and he replied by saying he objected to the other company’s use of the name. They responded quickly by offering to let him buy the domain names out from under the other company.

David decided to string them along for a while to see what happened. Eventually he got them to quote on registering six domains for 20 years. (By comparison, Microsoft’s domain registration expires in five years.)

This was all the answer I needed, and then some. I figured the least I could do for David is to promote his post so other people like me can find out about this scam. I can’t figure out if the scammers are ruthless or clueless, so go read David’s post about the Shanghai Chooke domain name scam and then read this followup and decide for yourself.