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    How Many Domain Names Do You Need?

    October 28, 2010, 06:33 PM

    Internet domain name registrations give certain opportunists openings to try to generate revenues through unsolicited offers to help domain name owners protect and expand their rights. As with similar offers relating to trademark registrations, ones relating to domain name services are often designed to make the recipient think action is urgently needed and that a response to the mailing or email containing the unsolicited offer is required. Some of these solicitations, under titles like Urgent Notice of Domain Extension, Domain Name Expiration Notice, and Domain Listing Service, may offer renewal services for domain names you have already obtained, help in registering related domain names, or other services. Others take the form of emails from parties claiming to be registrars of domain names outside the U.S., advising the owner of a .com, .net or .org Top Level Domain (TLD) name that someone else has applied to register the same name with a lower level suffix at its end for example .asia, .hk, .cn, .kr, etc. The purpose of these emails is to get the recipient to respond, at which point an effort to sell additional domain names begins. Click here for an example of what these emails look like. Recipients of these kinds of domain name-related communications should understand that they are, by and large, attempts to market and sell unnecessary services. For most companies, securing their chosen domain names with the .com, .net and .org TLD suffixes will give them a sufficient Internet presence and adequate assurance against cyberpiracy resulting from someone else using a domain name that is the same as theirs, but for its TLD suffix. Because .com, .net and .org are the TLDs that are most known and used, there is little or no reason to also obtain (and pay for) reservations of the same domain names with .biz, .us and other similar suffixes, let alone ones like .asia, .cn and .hk that are specifically applicable to faraway regions and countries. Solicitations for sales of these other domain names are a byproduct of the open availability of information with regard to domain name ownership, and can be safely ignored. –Robert E. Smartschan