Internet fraud’s price put at $550 million

Today’s cost of American online fraud comes in at a staggering $550 million. Authorities are tracing white collar crime growth in the triple triple digits. The anonymity afforded by the internet allows fraud and other crimes to be perpetrated on a broader scale than ever before. Viruses, piracy, and fee based scams were the principal cause of the frauds. California is the American state where more internet fraud crimes than anywhere else were reported.

Paypal Suspends Personal Accts India

PayPal, an eBay company, has suspended personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in the country. Domainers using Indian talent to produce SEO or content products may be stalled making payments or getting paid for services. PayPal is used in India by many to receive payment for services such as software development and freelance writing.

Customers can still make commercial payments to India, but merchants cannot withdraw funds in rupees at local Indian banks, it added. This will convolute many existing partnerships and vendor arrangements with domainers and their clients. But Paypal cites the difficulty resolving payment issues and identity problems with an Indian originating vendor or client.

The India Paypal personal banking services online and between Indian merchant branches function online in a critical capacity for international commerce. Paypal operations for personal accounts using Paypal have been suspended while the company works with its “business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service.” 

PayPal said it is trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and that it was sorry for the inconvenience that it may cause its customers in India and around the world. A number of bloggers and Web sites have reported that the company has reversed and returned payments to senders.

PayPal executives in the region were not available for comment on specific reasons why the service was discontinued. Allegations of international identity theft and questionable transactions will cause Paypal to review banking traffic between Indian members and clients, as well as other global banking transaction originators.

The move by PayPal may be linked to new Indian government rules aimed at preventing money laundering, according to an analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity. Last November, the Indian government introduced rules requiring financial institutions and other intermediaries to verify the identity of clients carrying out international money transfers.

PayPal’s user agreement says it does not guarantee any user’s identity because verifying identity of an indian individual is virtually impossible with current Paypal resources.  PayPal does reserve the right to validate customers’ identities, including asking for documents.

PayPal is used in India by many to receive payment for services such as software development and freelance writing. But the exchange of international services in Russia and China may depend on these issues.

Wanted: Internet Url Police

As the Haiti relief flowed to the disaster area, scammers were registering exploitative domain names and setting up false charity websites to target well-meaning donaters. The London Daily News featured a story on the opportunistic and fraudulent nature of these scams, but experts wonder if an Internet policing authority might not be appropriate to take down sites before the public gets scammed. When you are one url away from getting fleeced, wouldn’t it be prudent to have set some domain handling controls in place?

Deleting Domains Perk Up

The Pool.com list of Deleting Domains shows some action potential as G4B.com goes auctional. Touch.net and Youtub.com make for intriguing web possibilities. ADBT.com makes an acronym possible, and more  TLd’s like dd0s.biz are releasing ever day. Time to start shopping for that brand you always had in mind.

Domaining Hits the Beeb

Not often domainers see a BBC news story centered around domaining. Yet the BBC news network ran a recent story concerning the .me development market. Montenegro’s little TLD that could has garnered massive me-dia attention and helps domainers sell to end users. Over 50,000 live registrations marked a decided lively market of “me”. Now if only the Sudanese United Villagers would form a country….and get the .SUV TLD off the ground.

New Dot .hub market soon to open

 

Disputes about marshland property taxes, oyster bed revenues, and coconut harvesting environmental concerns gave rise to this constitutional anarchy. While the United Nations is still considering their petition offer, the European domain markets have been awash in requests for dot-HUB. The country code for .HUB will be brokered by Marcaria.com of France. Expatriates of the New Hebrides region have been approved for .hub domain purchase with responsibility for proof left with the domain name registrars.

 

What a Loss for Big G (Google domain dispute)

Recently there was an argument over a domain name that was reported to be very close to Google.com. The battle over the disputed Groovle.com domain name was lost by Google.

A complaint was submitted by Google to the National Arbitration Forum, asking that Groovle.com be switched to the complainant by the respondent, 207 Media. Google remarked that the domain name was way to similar to its own trademarked name. The similarities between the two names are not eliminated by minor misspellings or alterations. They felt that the domain name was being used in bad faith by the respondent.

The respondent insisted that they could prove a noticeable difference between the two domains. The disputed domain contains an “R” and a “V” which is important to distinguish the appearance, sound, connotation, and meaning from the trademarked Google. With the “V” and “R” present it is clear the the meaning of the predominant word isn’t Google at all but in fact groovy or groove.

The disputed domain was decided to remain with the respondent by the Panel, considering that Google could not show all of the elements  that they needed. Even the best of the best don’t always get what the want in the end.

 Here you can see the details on the final decision.

ICANN Wrestles Character Alphabets

ICANN is developing Web addresses that can be written in other languages. Suffix, such as the “com” after the dot, must be typed in Roman letters. The suffix known as a TLD on the Internet  expressed in 17 other alphabets. ICANN directors and advisors meet in Seoul this week to wrestle technical issues. Characters look the same but mean something different, which is particularly difficult with Chinese, the language that may someday be one of the most heavily used for Internet addresses.

Dell Wins Brand Domain Victories

Defending its brands from all domain comers was Dell Corporation which scored massive arbitration vistories over domain owners touching their brands Alien, Dell, Dell notebook and a typo that would adequately score traffic meant for Dell.

 The need for searching defensible brands before purchasing or bidding on a domain name is emphasized by these decisions. Analysis can be found at a search site like www.UDRPtalk.com and www.defendmydomain.com.

Russia.com sells for $US 1.5 Million

The domain named Russia.com was sold for $1.5 million through domain name marketplace Sedo. It’s one of the largest prices paid in 2009 for domain name. The buyer was not disclosed. The sale follows closely on the news release concerning Cyrillic spellings to be used for the Russian internet.

Launched in May 1995, Russia.com’ was owned by NewMedia Holdings, Inc. and operated under a license from web consultancy Paley Media, Inc. since 2004. Russia.com currently offers information about Russian travel, and claims more than 8,000 monthly unique visitors (according to Compete).

NewMedia Holdings and Paley Media also operate the media properties on the following domain names as country channels: Algeria.com, Morocco.com, PuertoRico.com, SouthAfrica.com, Scotland.com, Ukraine.com, etc. Those web-sites, which have similar designs, are monetized with Google contextual, search and banner ads.

The .ru domain name Russia.ru is operated by NewMedia Stars. Russia.ru is leading Russian internet TV channel with a monthly reach of $2 million in Russia in September 2009, according to TNS Web Index.

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