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Ask HN: Being "Blackmailed" by Foreign Domain Squatters

9 points by onwardly ↗ HN
A week ago, I got an email from someone at networksolutions.asia "informing" me that a foreign trading company was attempting to buy my startup's domain name at 11 different top-level domain names (e.g. ".hk", ".cn" , ".com.cn", etc.)

They noted that this conflicted with my own ".com" registration, and "offered" me the chance to purchase these domains before selling them to the trading company. Of course, the total cost to secure these domains is over $600 year. I informed them that our name is trademarked, to which they replied that it is "first come first served" in the Asia market.

Obviously, this stinks of a scam. I'm not going to pay them, mainly because:

1) We're not interested in buying the ".com.cn", etc. domains. We don't need them to sell our product.

2)Even if someone else buys them, they won't be useful. These domains won't get the clout from search engines we will (owing to us actually having a product and generating meaningful inbound links).

3) They can have the name, but without a product it'll be useless. And they won't have our product.

4) Its expensive, and not a necessary expense by any means, especially for a startup (atleast as far as I know).

5) Again, it stinks of a scam. We refuse to be "blackmailed".

I'm curious if any of you have had similar experiences or offers. It would be helpful to me, and I'm sure others, if someone with more experience in this area were able to chime in. Is this ever legit? Did your startup buy ALL related domains? At which point would you do this?

So far I own [our_domain].com, .net, .org, .us, and a few others... but where do you stop?

Thanks in advance for the input!

15 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] thread
bdclimber14
I receive emails like this from time to time. I just delete them. I really don't care if some company owns mystartupname.obscuretld, good for them. I think buying anything other than .com, .org, and .net is really a waste. Even .mobi and .co seem completely useless. Unless, of course, your main site is another TLD e.g. angel.co.

The main use of a TLD is to make it easier to type instead of IP addresses. Unless you're afraid your customers are going to start typing in yourdomain.asia on accident and actually think they are on the correct site, just ignore this.

RBerenguel
I've also had them once or twice for my blog (for which I only bought the .net). I may buy the .com some day, but so far I don't think I need it, more so because I try to use the full name+tld as "unofficial name of the blog".
arn
dude. buy the .com. if you don't a squatter or competitor will.
chc
Presumably the reason he didn't get it in the first place is because it was already squatted. I very much doubt the process ever goes, "So, I see the .com is available for my name, but I think I'll just go with .info instead."
arn
Except that's exactly what he did. His .com is available, I checked. He owns the .net.
RBerenguel
This is how it went. I thought about how my blog worked, didn't think it was a company, neither an organisation and settled for the .net

Just in case I have bought the other 2.

jonah
Yeah, it's a scam to try to scare you into buying your name in those other TLDs.

I or my clients get these emails fairly frequently.

I just checked on one of the domains we got that email for a few months ago and as was my assumption, they didn't actually register those domains. They're trying to get money from you registering those domains, not trying to typosquat them.

tl;dr: Just ignore these emails, they probably won't actually register them themselves.

muppetman
It's a scam! All they're trying to do is get you to buy these domains from them.

They send out hundreds of thousands of these a day. They don't have the finanical ability to register all the domains they threaten are going to be registered.

Plus the fact that Registrars don't do this... Slip someone a note saying "Oh someone else is trying to register your domain!".

regularfry
I've had exactly this before. Just ignore them, it's not worth the hassle.
benguild
I got this too and also ignored it.
flignats
Haha, definitely a scam - and a intelligent one when it first came out.

However, don't feel threatened by such claims. Get the domains you need now. Later on, when your website fingers crossed makes a bunch of cash and you're pissed at the squatters taking up ridiculous domain names, run to ICANN, file some paperwork, pay cash, and get your domains that are infringed upon.