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Wednesday 15 April 2009

"Yadu Investment Co., Ltd." / ntwifinetwork.com / tech-wifi.com

This email (supposedly from a Chinese domain registrar) follows a well-worn path of trying to sell useless names to owners of existing dot coms.

From: Joy [mailto:Joy@ntwifinetwork.com]
Sent: 10 April 2009 07:47
To: [redacted]
Subject: Notice of Intellectual Property Protection

Dear Sir/Madam: 2009-4-10

We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
Last week we received a formal application submited by “Yadu Investment Co., Ltd.” Which wanted to use the keyword " [redacted]" to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.
After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with this company. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down this registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his application
In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Joy

Checking Department


Tel: 86 513 8532 2060
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email :Joy@ntwifinetwork.com
Website: www.ntwifinetwork.com
Mail No.: [redacted]

Registrars DO NOT check trademarks before registrations (the exception is "sunrise registrations" for completely new top-level domains). This is an attempt to get you to buy an overpriced domain name that you don't need.

This mail may come from twifinetwork.com, tech-wifi.com or other domains, the domains are hosted on 174.138.60.95, some of the wording is lifted from asiaregistry.com although it is not possible to tell if they are affiliated.

If you are concerned about securing these domains, then most registrars now deal in Asian TLDs and can register them for you, else you are probably same to ignore it.

btw, the pitch is not new and has been used here, here and here.

6 comments:

Myroogle said...

This blog has helped me from believing what was said in the email. Please don't be fooled by it. Beware! I've just received a similar email from:

Sunny

Checking Department

Tel: 86 513 8532 2060
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email:Sunny@js-wifi.cn
Website: www.js-wifi.cn

Mail No.:1395105

Debbie and Palmer *v* said...

I also received this email today, and I stupidly reply back to this company.... it sounds so real...

Please tell me what to do? will my computer being hacked?

Conrad Longmore said...

Just ignore it. They are trying to sell you something that you don't need.

OKC Jeff said...

Same thing happened to us today, and because my company and I are located in Beijing, I stupidly replied before even doing a simple Google search. They don't even have valid Beijing phone numbers listed!
Here is the response that I received from "Sunny" (I deleted my name and my company's name for privacy):
"Dear XXXX
Thanks for your prompt reply.As far as we know, Yadu Investment Co.,Ltd want to apply for the following names
companyname.cn
companyname.com.cn
companyname.asia
companyname.net.cn
companyname.org.cn
And Internet Brand "companyname ".
You would know domain name takes open registration, this is international domain name registration principle. So Yadu Investment Co.,Ltd has right to register it.
If you think his registration will confuse your clients and harm your profits, we can send an application document to you and help you protect these domains within our approving period. This is a better way to prevent domain name dispute. If you think his application will not affect your company, you can give up, we will finish his registration. Hope get your decision as soon as possible so that we can handle the next step

Best regards

Your Sincerely Sunny"

Obviously there is no such thing as an "Internet brand"; this is so obviously a scam that I am embarrassed to admit that I replied to it.
Just ignore them and they will go away, or better yet, report them to whoever you can to make sure that nobody loses any money to these scumbags.

Unknown said...

I just got it too.
Thanks for posting this

Ed said...

I too received that email, it sounded harmless and i politley replied that the person who wants it can have it! Got the same email again today, which seemed weird, so I did a search and found your post showing an email with practically the exact same wording. Thanks for explaining the scam, pretty harmless. The disturbing thing would be that you fell for it because you were swayed into buying a domain you already decided had no value to you! Clever psychology in these recessionary times!