Email About Someone Taking Your Domain Names in China

October 17, 2011 by Eric Weidl

Several of our customers have recently received emails purporting to be from a company in China. The company claims that another company is trying to register our customer's domain names in China.

The emails are similar to the one below.

From:*Tony Song [mailto:tony.song@xyz.com]
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 11, 2011 3:44 AM
*Subject:* Urgent-Domain and Brand Checking intersites
*Importance:* High

/(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 October 10, 2011, One company which called 
"Batera Holding, INC" is applying to register "intersites" as brand 
name and domain names as below:

intersites.asia
intersites.cn
intersites.com.cn
intersites.com.hk
intersites.com.tw
intersites.hk
intersites.net.cn
intersites.org.cn
intersites.tw

After our initial examination, we found that the brand name being 
applied is 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 and this "Batera Holding, INC" are the same company, 
there is no need reply to us, We will accept their application and 
will register these for them immediately.

If your company has no relationships with that company or did not 
authorize them, please reply to us within 7 workdays, if we can't get 
any information from you within 7 workdays, We will unconditionally 
approve the application which is submitted by "Batera Holding, INC".

Thanks for your cooperation.

Like all good scams or con-jobs, there may be a bit of truth in this story. It may be possible that someone has applied to register those versions of your domain name.

Unlike most scams, we do not recommend trashing this one out of hand.

You should first stop and ask if having Asian versions of your domain name is or may be important to you in the near future. Do you or will you do business in China, Japan, Korea or other Asian countries?

If so, then it may make sense to register these versions of your domain name. They are not required to do business in those countries, but they may make it easier for your customers in those countries to find you.

The scam part of this email is, while you may want to register country-specific versions of your domain name, you do not want to use the company which sent the message. They will not provide the service you expect.

If you decide you would like to register country-specific versions of your domain name, contact us. We can guide you through the process and make sure you retain control of the domain names you purchase.

Posted in Alerts!, Help Me Understand