Over the years, we’ve seen a ton of email scams, and this is one of the ones which is circulating at the moment. You’ll get an email from a company, typically from China, saying that someone else is trying to register your domain name, and they need your permission to proceed.
This scam is trying to convince you to ‘protect’ your domain from this anonymous company by needlessly registering additional domain names through their service.
Emails like this can safely be deleted. One example is below, though there are a few variations they’re all quite similar.
Subject: Confirm About Asia Domain Register For [your domain name]
(It’s very urgent, so please transfer this email to your CEO or appropriate person. Thanks a lot.)
Dear CEO/Principal,
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 November 12th, 2013 that a company claimed “[fake company name here]” were applying to register “[your domain name]” as their Net Brand and some “[your domain name]” 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 “[fake company name here]” Looking forward to your prompt reply.
Have you had any experiences with domain name scams?
If you need help with these types of emails, AWEBthatWORKS offers a managed domain service where we’ll ensure that your domain name is renewed each year (unless we hear from you otherwise), with no need to worry about expired email address or payment methods. We’ll also handle any spam which comes through about your domain name. If you’re interested in having AWEBthatWORKS manage your domain(s) for you, please contact us today.
We've had this one about half a dozen times now. Each time we handle it the same. block any emails from that address.
Good move David! Thanks for visiting/commenting on our blog! Sue 😀