Canadian Firm to Settle Domain-Name Charges

A Canadian company has agreed to pay $375,000 to settle charges that it duped Internet domain-name holders into needlessly buying similar-sounding names, federal regulators said.

The Federal Trade Commission said a Toronto firm doing business as National Domain Name Registry sent unsolicited faxes to domain-name holders claiming that an unidentified third party had applied for an Internet domain name, such as “example.net,” that was similar to the one held by the owner, such as “example.com.”

The result could be confusion by customers and a loss of business, the fax claimed, unless the recipient blocked the application and bought the name for a $70 fee.

In fact, nobody had applied for those names, the FTC said.

The company agreed to pay back $350,000 it had collected from consumers, as well as an additional $25,000 in administrative costs, the FTC said.

Named as defendants in the settlement were Darren J. Morgenstern, 1268957 Ontario Inc. and 1371772 Ontario Inc., doing business as National Domain Name Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring and Corporate Domain Name Monitoring.