I never understood why most domains ending in .cm (usually happens when you miss the “o” typing a domain, which I seem to do at least once every few days) land on a shady looking agoga.com page filled with ads. Now I see why.
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 so lame, and such a scam. I wish that if a .cm domain is not registered, it would redirect to the registered .com domain – if one exists. Cameroon should rethink their decision on this one. Can they?
Cameroon gets money for this from Kevin Ham, a domain pioneer who had the idea to team up with cameroon for this typosquatting venture.
I recently purchased a domain name through http://www.domainmonster.com after finding them in Google. I found the shopping cart slightly confusing and was led to believe I had to purchase a .cm domain but that there would be no cost. I discovered later that my credit cad had been charged $149.99 for this. I contacted the company and had a number of emails back and forth with an Ian Johnson in their customer support. He refused to issue a refund and did not give any explanation as to why I would even need a .cm domain. This is definitely a scam. Do not deal with this company.