domain name question

[graymouser]

I recently received an email that confuses me. I have been told that there is a company that wants to register a series of domain names that are very similar to the one for my gallery. Basically my domain name is itamejihada.net. He wants to claim the company name of Itamejihada and have the same domain name but with the endings as

.cn
.com.cn
.asia.cn
net.cn
.hk

I have been offered the chance to register these other domains to avoid confusing future business clients. Since I have no business clients with this domain name, this is not an issue.

I guess my question is whether this sounds like a scam. Is someone just trying to get money from me to unnecessarily register extra domain names?

If it isn't a scam, does anyone feel it is worth registering these other names? Normally I do not think I would bother, but if someone else is running a business there may be a problem with my site interfering with theirs. Could he then cause me problems down the line? I do not know how likely this is to be an issue. Also, I have owned this domain name for about 10 years, wouldn't I have preference in any type of future dispute?

In case anyone was wondering... the name is a combination of 2 Japanese words. Katanas are forged by folding steel many times. The visible pattern of this folding in the finished blade is called jihada. There is more than one type of folding pattern. One of them is itame.

[benten]

You can see the internet top-level domain names listed at:
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/monthly-reports/

The .cn and .hk are country codes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hk

Basically, the company is attempting to register the domain name in china. I think the registration company is just trolling for more business.

This is nothing to worry about. If you were, it would be more important to worry about the other top-level extensions: .org, ,biz., .com. There are many other country codes besides the China and Hong Kong ones, so , if you were to attempt to register to claim all of the country codes as well, you would be spending a lot of money uselessly.

Yes, a decade of ownership of a domain name pretty much makes it impossible to challenge.

[iceman57]

Cyber Parking company, most are located in China and UK...

They focus on renewal data and websites statistics through Alexa ranking and try to buy domain with various extensions, then to resell them with a profit through auctions or suit threats. This company name is a fake, all they want is to get your password, username and credit card data to transfer the domain and drain your cash.

[graymouser]

Thank you very much.

I was a bit suspicious, but did not know how it all worked.

[iceman57]

Here is the exact term and procedure :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

imo, the coming cyber war, especially when domain owner is located in some "paradise country" where laws fluctuates as money flows... Here in our good old Europe most of crappy sites (lose 150lbs in a week, porn, poker) are hosted in Malta island.
There are procedures to claim to legal instances but i.e. for France, they charge a minimum of $2000 and ask first for an off-court setlement. Once you wasted months to have no replies to your signed letters, you can have access to the $2000 procedure way, how cute. I recently readed a report about a pornspam lawsuit in CA, the judge observed a galaxy of born death companies transferring cash to another recently non suited company and so on. I ancient Greece would have been called an Hydra.

Sadly the only last resort is this :