Thread: strange website domain email...scam?

I just got a couple of strange emails from a "registration company in China". I am not going to go out and buy the 15 domain names that they say are in danger of being "grabbed" by some company in China, but curious to see if anyone else has received this and if they eventually leave you alone!

1st email:
Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in Asian area, we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on September 7th, 2010, One company which self-styled "REEC Trading Co., LTD." are applying to register "nylacrystal" as brand name and domain names as below :
nylacrystal.asia
nylacrystal.cn
nylacrystal.com.cn
nylacrystal.com.hk
nylacrystal.com.tw
nylacrystal.hk
nylacrystal.in
nylacrystal.net.cn
nylacrystal.org.cn
nylacrystal.tw

After our initial checking, we found the brand name and these domain names being applied are as same as your company’s, so we need to get the confirmation from your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically.

If you have no any relationship with this company .please contact us within 7 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by " REEC Trading Co., LTD" unconditionally.

****I simply replied that I had no relationship with the "aforesaid" company.

2nd email:
Dear Mr. Nyla Crystal,

Thank you for your confirmation, If you have no relationship with the aforementioned company to register, so we suspect 2 points:

1. This company uses your brand to open up market.
2. This company may do the same business as you, or your competitors.

But you should know that, in China domain names registration is open, the applicant's application is legal, we can not reject their application, now you are the owner of trademark, you have the priority to register, because we can not stop any individual or entity to register any domain name, what we can do is informing you this. As China registrar, we must try to stop the domain grabbing.

Surely, if you think these domain names are not valuable, you need to email me to confirm that you will not follow this matter. Then we will finish aforesaid company's registration within 2 workdays. the company will become the legal owner of these domain names in the world.

Surely, this is only my suggestion, we will respect your decision. If you need to register, we will send the dispute application form and procedure to you at the first time.

Any questions, pls contact me in time, thank you for your cooperation.

Does anyone detect some ulterior motive other than trying to get me to buy 10 domain names to "protect" my "brand"?

Originally Posted by crystalllized

Does anyone detect some ulterior motive other than trying to get me to buy 10 domain names to "protect" my "brand"?

That might be the next step, especially since GoDaddy will no longer accept registrations for chinese domains. Go Daddy to stop registering .cn domain names | Web | Macworld However, my thought is that with the proliferation of possible variations on any web name, I'm not that much interested in owning all the versions.

Well, I do kinda wonder what it is they think YOU need to "register" with them...I don't know if this "registration" would simply cost you money, or if they'd mine your information either for scams or to sell...

I didn't reply to the second message and the "2-day deadline" has passed with no further email. I was also wondering why they sent me the first email asking me permission to approve this other company and then in the second email say that it doesn't matter whether or not I give permission because China allows open registration....

I am going to chalk this up as a "whatever" and leave it be.

It's some sort of scam. I've gotten similar emails. They were also from China, but instead of what was copied to the OP, they tried to say I was committing some kind of infringement, that my domain was their domain/business name, and I had only a couple of days to respond.

I didn't even read the whole thing. I just delete these kind of emails. I think the online scammers aren't just operating in Nigeria/West Africa. Similar scams seem to be coming out of China as well. I had to change my password for my personal Facebook account. I get a message for FB that someone was trying to hack into my account from China.

If it looks or sounds strange just delete it.

Those are spam. I get those emails on my work account and they go straight to my spam folder.

I do know a company that was sued because their domain name was trademarked by another company. You won't get an email. You'll get an official notice from a lawyer.

Also watch out for notices via mail about needing to register your domain because it's about to expire. Those are scams, too. They want you to register your domain with them and send you mail that looks like an invoice.

THanks for the heads up ladies!