Last week, we shared information about a Chinese domain services company that blasted owners of short domains, with spam.
The emails, targeted owners of premium LLL .com and LLLL .com domains en masse, most likely after extracting data from the WHOIS.
We have now confirmed that the company behind this spam blast is Yumi.com, organizers of the World Domain Conference.
What sets this particular unsolicited email campaign – in Chinese – apart from other typical spam from China?
The Yumi spam, sent from noreply@yumi-mail.com, has the following subject:
“Your domain: ****.com and so there is the risk of malicious arbitration, the proposed establishment protection!“
It continues as follows:
“Dear domain lovers:
Hello! After we held systematic analysis to detect your domain name: ****.com, ****.com, ****.com, ****.com, ****.com five domain names and other risks of malicious arbitration, in order to lower your domain assets are the risk of malicious arbitration, reduced due to unreasonable use or sell the domain name other reasons cause losses, net corn (yumi.com) launched a service station automatic domain name to protect your domain name!”
This false, fear-mongering claim that the domains referenced were supposedly “systematically analyzed” or that are in risk of a “malicious arbitration” is an outrageous statement.
The email’s opening was devised to create the immediate impression that valuable domain assets are in imminent danger.
Continuing on the same tone, the Yumi email begins its full course of namedropping resources and processes in place to handle domain arbitration.
First, ICANN is pulled into this email scam:
ICANN official release of the “Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” in the evidence of bad faith registration and use of domain names described as follows: The original link (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25- zh)
If the panel finds the following conditions (in particular the following circumstances, but not limited to), it can be used as evidence of bad faith registration and use of domain names:
(I) shows that in some cases, you’re already registered domain or have the domain name, the main competitor for sales to the complainant (the owner of the trademark or service mark) or the complainant, lease or transfer of the domain name registration to obtain equivalent return cash to pay costs directly related to the domain name than you party also recorded higher earnings; or
(Ii) Your party has registered the domain name, its purpose is to prevent the owner of a trademark or service mark to get the mark corresponding to the domain name, as long as your party has been involved in such acts; or
(Iii) Your party has registered the domain name primarily for destroying business of a competitor; or
(Iv) your use of the domain name is an attempt to intentionally attract Internet users to visit your party website or other online site for commercial interests, is to make the source of your party site or URL or the Web site or URL on the product or service, sponsors affiliation or endorsement with the complainant’s mark similarities thereby engender confusion.
These outrageous claims by Yumi.com allege that domain owners of LLL .com and LLLL .com domains referenced in each email, have run afoul of unspecified trademark violations – a blatant lie devised to sustain the fear-mongering purpose of this email.
Let’s continue analyzing the email:
Dispute resolution service provider approved by ICANN official website of the data also can be shown that recent events frequent rise in domain name arbitration, cases can be viewed through the following four specific service providers:
- ICANN policy on domain use : https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-zh
- Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center : https://www.adndrc.org
- Domain Arbitration Forum : http://www.adrforum.com
- WIPO : http://www.wipo.int/
- Arbitration Forum for Internet Disputes : http://www.adr.eu/
Is it part of the “education” to “domain lovers” that the mentioning of every major resource designed to settle domain name disputes is listed here by Yumi.com ?
Obviously, if you’re a gullible Chinese domain owner, you should be concerned at this point, simply from looking at these links!
Is this how business is done in China?
The email finally discloses its true function, to convince you to use the Yumi services, lifting any supposedly existing issues automagically!
“To sum up the regulations, the domain name will automatically launch maize network station, and provide information and other information nowadays popular services for visitors to the site, which is more reasonable for the application and domain name protection.”
In a nutshell, Yumi.com claims that by using their parking system, your domains will be safe from all the evil forces that are – supposedly – conspiring to get them!
The email describes the methodology of adding your domains to Yumi.com DNS servers:
Setting method:
1, register as a net corn yumi.com members, and domain name to the maize network system for authentication.
2, modify the DNS domain name: ns1.yumi.com and NS2.yumi.com
3, corn Network Service to send mail fuwu@yumi.com
Mail Title: Application corn parking service station network
Your username maize network:
It requires establishment of a list of domain name protection:
To make the entire domain account are carried out under the protection station, please note instructions in the message.
4, corn can also contact customer service network parking meters Xiaolu QQ: 3302626164 get help
You need to recommend a list of domain name protection.
And now for the fun part.
After reporting the incident to a Yumi employee, they initially claimed ignorance over it.
Yumi.com continued spamming domain owners with a modified version of this email, that includes the following disclaimer in orange letters, which was not included in our received version:
Note: This message is just a recommendation letter! If your domain name has a station, you are ahead of the domain name protection awareness has reduced the domain name is the risk of arbitration, please ignore this message; if your domain is not yet a station, here to remind you, please establishment protection as soon as possible, if necessary We also welcome your corn network of self-help service! Thank you for your attention!
A disclaimer that pretty much revokes the “systematic analysis” and the “risk protection” that the Yumi spammers claim to offer!
And it gets better.
What did Yumi.com send us when they were exposed on Facebook about this spam/scam combo?
“This email is only a recommendation letter to remind the domain owners to protect their domain name. Recently we have done analysis and detection for domains through the system of Yumi.com to collate some domains that are risky and then send email reminders to the domain owner about building websites to protect their domains.
Please ignore this email, if your domains have been used to build websites, which means you have advanced domain protective awareness that has reduced the risk of the domain being arbitrated, If your domain has not been used to build websites,Yumi.com only wants to remind you to build websites to protect your domains ASAP. If necessary, you are welcome to use the service of Yumi.com self-help building website.Thanks again for your time to read this email.”
Of course, even this statement is a bunch of bullshit, because a) The domains allegedly at risk are not violating any marks, and b) Even owners of developed domains were contacted with this spam from Yumi.com.
What does Yumi.com need to do at this point? Here’s a handy guide.
- Cease and desist from sending any more emails to domain owners, globally.
- Delete all data it derived from querying WHOIS ownership records for use in this spam campaign.
- Apologize to the domain investor community for the false allegations and insinuated trademark issues it delivered via this spam.
If that doesn’t happen, we’re certain that ICANN and the FCC would be very interested in launching a separate investigation into this brazen attempt to terrorize domain investors via a shameful email.
The first spam email from Yumi.com, without the disclaimer at the bottom.
The second email spam from Yumi, with a disclaimer at the bottom.
