How the scam works:

You have your own website and one day receive a call or an e-mail from a domain name registrar company. They say that somebody is trying to register a domain that is exactly like yours, but instead ends in “.org” (yours ends in “.com”).

The caller says it is a courtesy-call to inform you of this information and to ask if you would like to purchase it before they sell it to the other party. Several people fall for this scam, although the callers are just inventing the competition.

Below is an actual email message that our app Scam Detector received:

"Dear CEO, (if you are not in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks)

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. On July 12, 2012, we received an application from Henghua company requested "scam-detector" as their internet keyword from China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?

Kind regards,"

How to avoid:

Ignore the approacher. If you are really interested in the other domain, just log into your domain register and expand your plan. 

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