Recently, 5 of us in my company received an email from someone called “Alice Liu.” She claimed to be from the Asian Domain Registration Service in China and she was in a dilemma. A client of hers called the "Tanlang Towan Co" wanted to register a domain name in China that was the same as my company’s. She wanted to know if we were in any way related to "Tanlang Towan Co" and if not she would happily register the domain name in China for us, overriding her client’s preferences.
This email made me suspicious. I tried googling "Tanlang Towan Co," and the URL and company name from the email signature. As expected, Google returned NO results. Then I googled the domain of the email address from which I received the mail and my suspicions were confirmed. This was some kind of scam that coerced companies into registering their domains and protecting their “brand” for an exorbitant fee.
What these guys basically do is that they first send a mail (usually targeting the CEO of that company) that goes something like this:
“Dear Sir/Madam,
About the "c&^%(^&$#(#&(#s". We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. Here I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July30th, 2014 that a company claimed "Tanlang Towan Co" were applying to register "c&^%(^&$#(#&(#s" as their Net Brand and some "c&^%(^&$#(#&(#s" Asian countries top-level domain names through our firm.
Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we could handle this issue better. After the deadline we will unconditionally finish the registration for "Tanlang Towan Co" Looking forward to your prompt reply.
(It's very urgent, so please transfer this email to your CEO or appropriate person. Thanks a lot.)
Best Regards,
Alice Liu”
They scare you into thinking that you will lose your domain name to some other company so that you register the same domain with them for a very highly unreasonable fee.
If you reply to their mail they will follow it up with a call so that they can apply even more pressure on you to register. In a couple of days or so, you will receive a mail from an employee of the “company” saying that they need this domain name and that they will be registering it. This email is usually from a Yahoo or Hotmail account (which seems wrong anyway).
The registration company will also send you a mail with the prices for registration and “Brand Protection.” Nobody is sure what Brand Protection even means or covers.
If you receive such a mail DO NOT REPLY to it. Some users have suggested replying with an abusive tone as this is quite effective in demotivating these people (In Chinese culture it is extremely rude to insult someone). Also, please note that if you do not do anything you will not lose your domains. Nobody is going to steal them from you.
Wish you happy surfing!!
