tony start said at February 18th, 2008 at 8:52am

We had this same email as well. Why would anyone want to register “bluewaterforklift” in China. So we were about to respond when we saw this blog. Thanks for your view on it, we agree, nice to see a second opinion. I wonder how many emails they sent out. Clever.
Tony

Ron Hettwer said at February 18th, 2008 at 7:48pm

We also got the e-mail yesterday. Thanks for alerting us as we were about to respond to them. Does anyone know how this might be stopped? Isn’t googlo great!! Ron

amy liu said at February 19th, 2008 at 5:17am

We also got one today. Thanks for the above sharing.

Byron Collett said at February 21st, 2008 at 12:32am

Got the e-mail yesterday…thanks for alerting us!

Patricia said at February 22nd, 2008 at 2:49am

I also received this e-mail today. I too worried that someone wanted to register my name, than 2 seconds later, being suspicious as I am of unknown e-mails, decided to google their name. Thank you for posting this. How DO we report them?

another victim from the US said at February 22nd, 2008 at 4:40pm

My company got the same email, although from someone named paker.lin at Star East Technology. Everything else was the same. Same alledged “squatter” Viva International Holdings. Thanks for blogging this, I almost fell for it also, as we had been victimized earlier this year by someone who was infringing on our trademark with a similarly worded domain registration. But something about this email was odd enough to cause me to do some searching. Glad I find your posting.

MINDY said at February 22nd, 2008 at 6:11pm

We also rec’d several emails from this “company” over the last few days with the same “threats” that everyone else is getting. I must admit that we were upset in the beginning. We also got about 300 hits on our site over a few days from the same person. We did email them back and told them the same thing I told the guys who were from “THE EMBASSY IN AFRICA” and I could gain millions of dollars if I helped them….I said (after months & months of deleteing the emails) “if you email me again I will turn you into to Dateline NBC…it all stopped!!! Mindy

Warning of Domain Name Scams! « Artistsvalley Designs said at March 10th, 2008 at 12:43pm

[...] a few. Thanks to blogging though… all it takes is 5 minutes of Google-ing to know that such scams can never last.  Just when I started to think that the world had enough of the [...]

Domain Name Scam - StarEast « Online Scams and Threats said at May 31st, 2008 at 9:58am

[...] You can see a huge list of domain name scammers here! But this list of organized scams is getting shorter by the day. Thanks to blogs… all it takes is 5 minutes of Google-ing to know that such scams will never last.  [...]

Beware the domain-name hucksters - blog - James Cridland said at June 16th, 2008 at 8:35pm

[...] a seller of small articles, usually of cheap or shoddy quality – the latest in a series about the domain-name [...]

Craig Mason said at July 18th, 2008 at 7:33am

Unfortunately, a client of mine was recently hit by the same scam, although via telephone conversation. The company in question (iserveuk.net) suggested that he registered 10 domains for 10 years… at £10 a pop.

£1000 later, I discovered that the domains have been registered for the minimum period of time. The victim was so angry that he drove to the ‘registered address’ of iServeUK… only to find that the address didn’t exist.

Keep an eye on http://www.domainscams.co.uk/ for recent updates.

Terlan said at July 30th, 2008 at 10:51am

A client just got this one yesterday and my blackberry was plagued with emails from him about it all day.
Theres been variants of this scam been going around for several years now. The problem with this one is it does have the air of being legitimate.

The bit that scares people, is the implied threat of the fictional company thats about to register a trademark on your domain, could at some point take your domain from you. And this scamm works.

A lot of businesses dont have on staff IT or web developers, and hire them on an ad hoc basis when needed, but still register all their own domains, after all how hard is it to set up a godaddy account and buy a domain or ten. And when the guy with the credit card gets this scam he doesnt have several years experience of spotting these and hits the reply button on his outlook.
And another scammer makes a buck. Sucks doesnt it.

rocker314 said at February 24th, 2009 at 6:48am

Everyone should be aware and have the so-called “instinct”. You can also try Scam Search so that you can avoid if the companies are really scams or not.

James Cridland said at August 28th, 2009 at 10:13am

Just got another one of these, from some bloke called Fred Han in Shanghai. I only mention this for Google reasons, and quote a bit of it to assist Google in this quest! ;)

(If you are NOT CEO,please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent.Thanks.)
Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on August 27 2009, One company which self-styled “Indian Borm Trading Co.” are applying to register “mediauk” as Net Brand name and CN domain names as below :
mediauk.asia
mediauk.com.hk
mediauk.com.tw
mediauk.hk
mediauk.in
mediauk.net.cn
mediauk.org.cn
mediauk.tw
After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand name applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark.

PK said at September 1st, 2009 at 1:24am

Yes, I also received the same email from Fred Han re the “Indian Borm Trading Co” trying to register domain names similar to ours. Thanks for posting these scams – so helpful when trying to wade through the “rubbish”.

James Cridland said at December 4th, 2009 at 2:50am

Hey, Mike Lee has been on the email, from Shanghai. He says, in an email eerily familiar…

(If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate dept, thanks.)

Dear CEO,
We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on December 04, 2009, one company which called “Head investment & Development ltd” is applying to register “mediauk” as network brand and following Domains:
“mediauk.asia
mediauk.com.hk
mediauk.com.tw
mediauk.hk
mediauk.in
mediauk.net.cn
mediauk.org.cn
mediauk.tw”
After our initial examination, we found that the network brand applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it, and hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company has not authorized the aforesaid company to register these, please contact us as soon as possible.
In addition, we hereby confirm that our time limit is 7 workdays. If your company files no reply within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Head investment & Development ltd”.
Best Regards,

Mike Lee (Mr.)
Senior Consultant
Room Room520,Unit A,International Shoes City,
No.1775 CaoAnRoad,Jiading District,Shanghai,China
Tel : +86-21-69106991
Fax : +86-21-69106670

Claudia said at January 23rd, 2010 at 12:55am

Received almost a word for word as above for my domain, in regards to SWS Soft CO. from:

Fred Han
Auditing Dept.
Address: Room 515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road, Fengxian District, Shanghai

Tel: +0086-21-37529318
Fax: +0086-21-37529316

James Cridland said at January 23rd, 2010 at 4:02am

Another one, by the way. Here’s the Googlebait:

Dear CEO,

We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Jan 18, 2010, we received an application formally. One company named “Bandns International Holdings Ltd” wanted to register following.

Internet keyword: mediauk

Domain names:

mediauk.asia
mediauk.com.hk
mediauk.com.tw
mediauk.hk
mediauk.info
mediauk.tw

through our body.

After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of Bandns International Holdings Ltd yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Fairy.Yang
Sponsoring Registrar: sk holdings company ltd
HongKong Office
Tel:+85295660489/+85295660103
Fax:+00852-30696940
Email: fairy.yang@skdmrc.org
Web: www.sk-dns.org/www.asia-gov.com

James Cridland said at January 23rd, 2010 at 4:04am

…and another in quick succession:

From: “John Wang”
Date: 18 January 2010 15:10:38 GMT+08:00
Subject: About Your Brand name and domain names:”cridland”
Reply-To: john.wang@china-fowa.org

Dear CEO,
We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on January 18, 2010, One company which self-styled “Weimin Technology Limited” are applying to register “cridland” as brand name and domain names as below :
cridland.asia
cridland.cn
cridland.com.cn
cridland.com.hk
cridland.com.tw
cridland.hk
cridland.net.cn
cridland.org.cn
cridland.tw
After our initial examination, we found that the brand name applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark.These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company has not authorized the aforesaid company to register these, Please contact us as soon as possible.
In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is ten days. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Weimin Technology Limited”.

Best Regards,

John
John Wang
Senior Consultant

Nida said at January 25th, 2010 at 10:45am

Thank you all for your opinion and experience shared reagrdingthis new scam. I had one this morning, everything the same with my domain name and the Company interested was Bandns International Holdings Ltd. We did reply to them with our contact details and were responded via email for the dispute form. Just a wild thought compelled me to google it. And here lies the TRUTH.
Thanks & Regards.

Richard Kessling said at February 1st, 2010 at 12:59am

Thanks

And there’s more:received this morning

Dear CEO,

We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

Today, we received an application formally. One company named “YellowFountainhead Investment Corp” want to register

some domain names which are related to “dbl”

After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. You know this company? Do you have consigned them to register these domain names with us? These days we are dealing with it. We doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of YellowFountainhead Investment Corp yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Yoyo.wan
Sponsoring Registrar: sk holdings company ltd
HongKong Office
Tel: +85295660489 /+85295660103
Fax:+00852-30696940
Email: yoyo.wan@skdmrc.org
web www.sk-dns.org www.asia-gov.com
________________________________________
yoyo.wan
2010-01-31