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May 22, 2007

The .CM Scam

Michael Arrington

68 comments »

Business 2.0’s Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).

The .CM pages are served based on a wildcard. If the domain has not been registered, the user is redirected to agoga.com. Since the redirects are taking place via a wildcard, and domains are not actually being registered, there is little trademark holders can do to fight this (other than register the domain themselves).

This is actually one of the cleaner scams occurring in the extremely dirty domain name business. ICANN, which oversees top level domains like .com, .net and .info, has no oversight or regulatory powers over the two-letter country code domains like .cm. It’s up to the individual countries to decide what is ethical and what isn’t. And when money is thrown at these small countries, it seems that they have little hesitation in giving control of their namespace to a relatively unknown speculator.

Update: Some of the comments below suggest that it’s unreasonable for me to make broad statements characterizing the entire domain industry as “dirty.” I think those criticisms are fair and worth pointing out here in the post. There are intelligent people who disagree with some of my opinions.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Urls

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    They should have never designated anything close to .com in the first place. I’m filing for .con next year I hear it’s only a million bucks. How much in typo money can I make? For sure enough to foot the bill.

  2. Chris

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    Domain squatting is like virtual land speculation. It’s a ridiculous business, not to mention a waste of a ton of good domains!

  3. Steve S

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    It is a ridiculous business, bu so is sending out 500 Million emails advertising penny stocks just to sell out after you have artificially pumped their value. Just because a business is ridiculous, doesn’t mean that people won’t take every chance they get to try it out.

  4. sean percival

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm

    Wow, actually im surprised it took this long for someone to try this.

  5. Mik

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm

    yahoo is the ultimate scammer, wasting advertiser dollars by allowing ads to be shown on placeholder pages. It’s supposed to be against both google and yahoo policies to show ads on placeholder pages or pages with no other content except ads, but everyone does, including godaddy.com

    Godaddy is even worse since they show ads on domains of registered names with their service if the person who registered to domain hasn’t bothered creating a page for it yet.

  6. David Mackey

    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    Lot worse things than advertising filled landed pages (e.g. viruses to create botnets)…

  7. Ben

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    The businessman who did this definitely is getting his money’s worth, but it can be quite a pain; I frequently make the mistake of typing “google.cm rather than google.com”.

  8. John Roberts

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    If you are using OpenDNS, then by default, all .cm wildcards are redirected to .com. Of course, you can turn this off if you want. This was covered in full in August 2006: http://blog.opendns.com/category/cctlds/

    John Roberts
    OpenDNS

  9. Jorge

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:08 pm

    Mik, you are aware that more than half of Google’s income comes from SpamWord sites?

    The reason those sites have flourished is because Google hasn’t done anything to realistically address the problem. At this point, it’s not like they even could; too much of Google’s revenue depends on spam.

    In contrast, most of Yahoo’s revenue comes from sources that aren’t so dependent on spam.

  10. ponder-er

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm

    in the 2.0 article it says it’s not illegal. then why call it a scam?

  11. Phinnz

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    The fix starts at the browser, as the full Biz 2.0 article briefly states. There are only a handful of major browsers, if they all have detection for .cm or unregistered domains (IE redirects unregistered domains to a Microsoft page), the effort involved in cutting deals with these governments is over-ridden. I don’t see this tactic working past .cm before the browsers and domain lawyers catch up with it.

  12. RP

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    Hypocrite. How much did you make selling TM typos to the highest bidder at Pool.com?

  13. Startup Capital

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    How is Michael Arrington a hypocrite? I don’t understand?

    Google is stopping to monitize porn domains june 1 and other tactics to improve quality. Google has to much to lose to do nothing. It is one step at a time.

  14. AhmedF

    May 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    Ahh someone brought up Pool. Good times :)

  15. Steve Morsa

    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    Ouch, Michael!

    RP and AhmedF are right; so much venom from the former CEO of Pool; a company that was/is involved in its own, er, um, shall we say “controversial” “methodologies” and business practices . . .

    A scam? Who’s fault is it that we all mistype on occassion? Who’s getting hurt here–anyone? How hard is it to retype? This is no Nigerian chain letter/e-mail scam.

    One things for sure, though; a financially poor country is getting some much needed income . . . without anyone getting hurt.

    I’m just sorry I didn’t think of it first.

    You, too? :-)

  16. Andrew Johnson

    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 pm

    A scam? What about all the typo traffic from internet explorer going to Microsoft? Or, if you have the Google toolbar installed, Google?

    A some of you commenters are f’ing idiots, learn a thing about type-in domain traffic. It accounts for double digit percentages of Google and Yahoo’s revenues.

  17. Markus

    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    I once inquired about purchasing a .cm domain name from the official registrar.

    Firstly it was six or seven hundred dollars per year (ouch), secondly you had to snail mail the registration along with payment and expect 6 or so weeks for it to go through (seriously). Lastly, the person I corresponded with didn’t speak English much at all and couldn’t answer some pretty basic questions.

    All in all it felt pretty shady but to be honest I probably would have gambled on a couple (generic, not TM) domains if I had the money to spare (read: lose). Sadly I did not.

  18. Matt

    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    @ Jorge & Andrew

    Do you guys have evidence that so much of google and yahoo’s ad revenue comes from spam? It seems logical that this could be the case, but how do you know for sure?

    If you could point me to some articles talking about it I’d appreciate it.

  19. Matt

    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 pm

    I’m sorry, that was @ Mik, not Jorge

  20. Basicity

    May 22nd, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    It’s not a scam! It’s legal and I must say brilliant!

  21. Kevin Ham

    May 22nd, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    his name is Kevin Ham, the article is from business2.com…he makes millions easily many times over with all the generic keyword .cm domain names he owns.

    the people who are hating are jealous, me to included

  22. weldon

    May 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm

    Kevin Ham doesn’t own any .cm domain names. His deal with Cameroon is to redirect all *unregistered* domains to agoga.com. They’re generating income from an unused resource instead of just displaying a “server not found” message.

  23. Mr.O

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm

    Genius

  24. Daily Domainer

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm

    “Since the redirects are taking place via a wildcard, and domains are not actually being registered, there is little trademark holders can do to fight this (other than register the domain themselves).”

    It’s one of the most audacious stunts in the history of the Internet, and Microsoft is doing exactly the same thing on an even larger scale by redirecting domain typos (including typos of trademark domains) to ad-filled results pages, making millions upon millions in the process. OK, I admit it… I’m jealous, too. ;)

  25. Eran

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm

    According to my sources, the domain techcrunch.cm is Available! Only $600 a year!

  26. Eran

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    Man, I hate typo-snarking! That link should point at techcrunch.cm

  27. Sahar Sarid

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    There’s no scam here at all, it is all played by the book. Cameroon has all rights to do whatever they want with .cm and they chose to lease the traffic.
    Is .tv a scam too?

  28. Adi

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 pm

    ~ $700.00 for a domain. Hmm maybe I should talk to few friends. Get a good domain and share the advertising money ;)

  29. Adi

    May 22nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm

    What do you think how long would it take google to sue the owner of google.cm????

  30. ejv

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    Did you stop and think that Yahoo is behind this? What better way to get back at Google. And guess what, type in yahoo.cm and you get redirected to yahoo.com, wow…

  31. ToddW

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:19 pm

    Well there goes all the generic .cm domains.

    Last I checked porn.cm and sex.cm were among the MANY qualtiy generic ones still available for purchase. Hell, $600 is NOTHING you can make that back in less than a month with those domains.

    Suddenly registration in .CM are going through the roof :P

    I’m wondering if this Kevin Ham guy also has a deal / first dibs on domains that are attempted to be registered. YOu send $600 to the gov. and if Kevin doesn’t want it they sell it if he does then you loose out. It doesn’t make sense why he would NOT buy generic non-TM .cm domains unless he thinks 1. it wont last forever and he’s not going to invest that much (more) money 2. he has first dibs and doesn’t care if people try to register them. There’s a LOT MORE going on here than people know.

  32. ToddW

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    I also don’t think it’s a scam… it’s a VERY SMART thing to do… he also hid himself from a lot of people for a very long time.

    I guarantee everyone is thinking “why didn’t I think of that”… :D

  33. Kevin Ham

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    that dude, kevin ham, practically…well basically, owns the cameroon extension.

  34. hugh jass

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Coming from someone who worked for POOL you should know all about scams

    FranK Schilling is 100% correct and a lot smarter than Arrington and he does not have to pump up Web 2.0 companies

  35. sevent

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    Not dirty, just different. There’s no Immutable Law of the Universe which says that google.cm *must redirect* to google.com. Indeed, the whole point of having more than one TLD is so you can have more than one google. If someone mistypes a domain name, why does that traffic automatically belong to the mistyped domain? Why shouldn’t it belong to the place where the person actually shows up?

    The .cm registry controls the entire .cm space, why shouldn’t they try and monetize the mistypes? As pointed out by others, lots of hands are in the unresolved domain pot: Browsers, Open DNS, proxy servers and more — for example, anyone with a numeric domain under 256.com and wildcard subdomains enabled gets traffic to dead IP addresses which the browser routes to .com. Is that a scam too?

  36. helge

    May 22nd, 2007 at 11:58 pm

    Note: In West Africa for such deals you don’t throw money at the country, you throw it at individual state executives, who usually spend it in London or in this case Paris. Cameroon is a very beautiful but unfortunately very corrupt country.

  37. SjH

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:16 am

    It’s not “small countries” in which this is apt to happen, it’s poorer countries.

  38. kim

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:48 am

    Similar story in Congo, but worse.

    The .cd was sold by a State Minister to a European investor. ICANN finally awarded it back to the Congolese government after a few years.

    Trouble is, Congo has yet to organize itself to have it’s own servers to control their domain name. In other words, they’re clueless.

    Apparently, ICANN is taking back control over the .cd.

    And it’s not about “small” or “poor” countries. It’s about poor management.

  39. Dominik Mueller

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 am

    Michael, please explain why you call this a scam. It is not. It is legal to have a wild-card forward the traffic of unregistered domains to a parking page and monetize this traffic. Also, why call domaining an “extremely dirty business”? As in every industry, there are always black sheep and it is unfair to call the entire domain business shady or “dirty” only because of a few cybersquatters. I’m not trying to play down cybersquatting/typosquatting, it is a problem. But it is not true that the domain business is dirty as a whole. It is the few black sheep and misinformed posts, such as yours, who damage the image of the domain name industry.

  40. Dach

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:29 am

    Helge and Sjh, let me told you that Cameroon is one of beautiful country in Africa. I invite you to come to visit.
    If you want to register a .cm domain , let me know, I will help you to do this. I will follow all process for you.
    send me email at armand4da@yahoo.com
    Thanks
    Dach

  41. Sasha

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:02 am

    “It’s up to the individual countries to decide what is ethical and what isn’t.”

    Cameroon gov’t might not even have all the information necessary to make a sound decision.

  42. Mukesh

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:36 am

    Interestingly all these sites show no whois data. Their whois data is blank.

  43. Ozh

    May 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 am

    BTW, the scam is pretty smart in theory but rather poorly done : while techcrunch.cm does redirect to the placeholder ads, techcrunch.cm/someurl only shows a 404 :)
    Nice thinking, then no brain in doing.

  44. Mike

    May 23rd, 2007 at 6:23 am

    Were can you buy a “.cm” domain from? I cants seem to find any “for real” comapny that lets you buy them..!!

    cheers

  45. pallet jack

    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:00 am

    yeah sounds like a good move to me; not a scame - just not completly ; legit :)

    - its the american way -

  46. Dach

    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:26 am

    Mike, if you want to buy .cm domain, please let me know, I will help you

  47. Scott Schiller

    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am

    While this .cm business is seedy, it pales in comparison (IMO) to when a certain company “broke” DNS on the Internet - such that all normally-invalid DNS lookups would then resolve to something: A site with ads.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitefinder

  48. Dan

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 am

    I do see a problem here. The notion that all .cm traffic is wildcarded (treated equally) does not bear out.

    Try:
    disney.cm (goes to a domain sponsor page)
    verizon.cm (goes to a hit farm page)
    google.cm (goes to an end user advertiser page)
    microsoft.cm (goes to an altered agoga page)

    If the traffic was wildcarded as suggested shouldn’t all domains in .cm resolves similarly? Since they do not one could opine that the differential treatment of the domain traffic is indicative of the targeting of famous brands and tms?

  49. Steve

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 am

    What? Advertising is booming, the monetization of anything and everything is in. The names aren’t registered, but wildcarded.

    As mentioned above, OpenDNS is an alternative. But that doesn’t make it new. It’s old news. Tell the public about relevant “domainer” topics such as Registerfly.

  50. steve

    May 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 am

    this is old new: aug 2006

    http://blog.opendns.com/2006/0.....ut-of-com/

  51. Jonas

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 am

    Open DNS… try it.

  52. Adam

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Everybody grab your popcorn . It’s a blog duel.

    Frank maybe Mike left pool because he had a guilty conscience about all the tm typo names pool was selling off (and monetizing before releasing I might add).

    I’m pretty sure while you were with Pool during its rise that they were one of the top companies involved in “clever scams in the dirty domain business”.
    How many registrar accreditations do they have now anyway? How many registrar accreds does 1 company need ? You worked around the barriers just like any business person would . . . and now you point the finger and call the “industry” dirty ? CLASSIC

  53. Franky

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    No blog duel from me Adam.. I am predisposed to like Mike, but I just don’t understand the vitriol and unfair malignment of an entire space .. the hate coming from his ivory tower. If we’re dirty for trying to run white hat businesses in this space then so’s he can be no better.. that’s all.

  54. Blue_Chi

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    A proposal was made by an undisclosed company to the Telecommunication Regulation Authority in Oman to have all unresolved traffic under the .om domain be redirected to a website created by that company called Search.om. The TRA made a public consultation announcement and has been collecting feedback. We do not know if they are going to go with the deal or not yet.

    I’ve written about it last month here
    http://blue-chi.blogspot.com/2.....o-tra.html

  55. Hagen

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    The more I look into the domain industry, the more I think Michael is just telling it like it is. This my be what the future Domain Conferences look like:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....mp;search=

  56. Hagen

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    Adam, pass the popcorn please.

  57. kamal

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    Michael,

    As a regular reader of TechCrunch, am surprised with your tone in this article and comments. Your readers are entitled to opinions, and since you’ve enabled comments, to air them.

    To respond to them in a personally aggressive manner only dilutes TechCrunch.

  58. kamal

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    Since we’re on the subject, am wondering why no one is making a big deal about Demand Media auctioning off trademark names followed by .TV (ie: NFL.TV) for high amounts?

    That’s a scam. Making a deal with a country to monetize their assets isn’t.

  59. Hagen

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Kamel, Thanks for confirming more “scams occurring in the extremely dirty domain name business”, as Michael originally stated. Anyone else want to add anything. Organized crime? Wow, that is a new one, but now that I think about it, why wouldn’t they have their fingers in ripping off brands like TM domain names. It’s easier and cheaper than making a counterfeit Gucci bag, and you make more.

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