If there’s one thing that we can be sure about with the Internet, it’s multiplied the number of people who will attempt to extract your cash many times over. Today I have been reminded of a scam by Brad from 4-Security (CCTV Installations – check them out), who points me to something that’s returned after a couple of years in the wilderness…

The form of this particular scam is an email that goes something like this:

Dear Principal,
We get your email address from the Internet. It is glad to write to you with
keen hope to open a business relationship with you in the future.

We are a professional internet consultant organization in HongKong, On the
May. 28, 2009, we received an application formally from our client. its name
is Media Cache Co., Ltd. They want to apply for the registration of the
domain name and Internet keyword “<insert domain>” from us.

After our initial examination, we found that the brand name and domain names
applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark.
These days we are dealing with it. We need to know the comment of your
company because the domain names and Internet keyword may relate to  the
copyright of brand name on internet.  Now we have not finished the
registration of  them yet, in order  to deal with this issue better, Please
contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Have a nice working day !

Heavy stuff! Some geezer is walking on my patch, about to steal my identity and all my business because look, they want to register my domain name and my ‘internet keyword’.

Let’s start with the domain name. If you bought it through a reputable company and you are the registered owner, then it doesn’t matter who tried to register it, they can’t have it. It’s yours and when it’s due for renewal, you get first shot at it, nobody else, even if it’s on back-order.

And then there’s the ‘internet keyword’ this guy wants to buy. Now, this has come up a lot lately and a few people have asked me about the availability of ‘internet keywords’. Just for clarification, ‘keywords’ cannot be bought from the ‘internet’. You can bid for advertising using a number of systems (like AdWords from Google for example) but you can’t ‘buy’ them.

It’s a scam and the thing to do is to delete the email, add the sender to your spam list and ignore it.