South West eCommerce

We've been getting LOTS of enquiries about this email scam, so have decided to upload an article about it.

Misleading unsolicited emails from Asian domain name companies

At least two companies apparently based in China and Hong Kong have been sending unsolicited emails to people with .au domain names, attempting to mislead them into registering their name in a number of Asian domain spaces.

Examples include:

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 “***” 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 this company’s application

In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.

and

We are a professional domain name registration center in asia, mainly dealing with the domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection.

We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “***” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Apr 2th, 2009. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. we would like to confirm if this company is your partner, subsection or some one you authorized, if it is not, pls inform us if these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first or not, thanks for your cooperation, looking forward to your reply.

The Australian Domain Name Administration (auDA) does not have jurisdiction to handle complaints about these emails, as they do not involve the registration of .au domain names. However, we understand that authorities in Hong Kong are investigating at least one of the companies sending these emails.

In our view the claims made in these emails are false and misleading, and we advise people to disregard them.