Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in China, have something need to confirm with you. we formally received an application on December 2, one company which called “Urbai Trading Co.,LTD.” are applying to register ” YourDomainNameHere” as brand name and following Domains:

YourDomainNameHere.cn
YourDomainNameHere.com.cn
YourDomainNameHere.net.cn
YourDomainNameHere.org.cn
YourDomainNameHere.tw
YourDomainNameHere.com.tw
YourDomainNameHere.hk
YourDomainNameHere.com.hk
YourDomainNameHere.asia
YourDomainNameHere.in

After our initial examination, we found that the brand name  applied for registration are as same as your company using name and brand. these days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. if your company did not authorize the aforesaid company to register these, please contact us as soon as possible.

In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit is 7workdays. if your company files no reply within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by ” Urbai Trading Co.,LTD.”.

Best Regards,

What’s their objective?  They’re trying to make some money by registering domain names.   It’s an international version of GoDaddy asking you if you’re sure that you don’t want to register the .org and .net versions of your domain name.  However this is a scam because I’m sure no one else was trying to register any domain names like mine.  How can I be so sure?   There is no research like this done to register domain names.  If a name is available, anyone can regester it.

I just deleted the email while I wondered about putting that “CEO” title on my business cards.  Hmmm . . . .

Hi,
I want to place an order in your store,and i will like to know if you ship
to Australia and my method of payment will be credit card.so please let me
know if you can assist me with the order ,And please do not forget to
include your web page in your replying back to my mail.I will await your
prompt response as soon as you receive this mail,i will be be very glad if
you treat this email with good concern…

Best Regards
Dave Springer

He also supplied a physical address in Australia and an email address from Gmail.com.

This is a scam.

One way to spot it is the fact that good ol’ Dave used a Gmail account. Business deals coming from free email services should always raise a red flag. If he were a real business person the chances are that his email address would have been associated with the business he claimed to represent.

Dave asked for my customer’s website even though he sent her an email at that’s associated with the website. (Her website is something like www.DomainNow.com and he emailed her at Brenda@DomainNow.com.) He has her website address.

English doesn’t seem to be Dave’s primary language. While I’m sure there are people of all nationalities living in Australia it does raise a red flag.

You can also enter key phrases from this email into Google and see that this email is being sent out to a lot of people. Check out the January 25th entry on Noel Hefele’s blog. This is also discussed at the Etsy forum.

Dave may have used a fake or stolen credit card number to pay for his purchase. Maybe he would have asked to pay upon delivery and then never paid. If my client didn’t fall for either of those scenarios he may have paid with a fake money order. Then he might have been so low as to change his order and wanted a refund for part of his payment. His check would have been fake, my customer’s would have been real.

The Internet is a wonderful and wild place. Remember to proceed with caution.