Domain Dispute and Registration Scam

The following is an e-mail I’ve received a couple of times already. I figured I’d share it with my readers (or google searchers) who may receive similar letters. These letters are complete scams.
The company in question scares you into believing someone is going to register your domain name with the China suffix – they make money by having you register it instead with their company. Their prices are exorbitant – I think starting over $100! If you want your domain with the .cn suffix you probably can register cheap it elsewhere.
Bear in mind, however, that there are hundreds of suffixes – I think there is one for every country in the world, as well as others like .info and .net and .gov. They are also creating new ones all the time. This means that unless you are a huge company, it neither makes sense to register your name with every suffix out there nor is it financially viable.
Can it be a problem? Well yes. For example PROVEA, a human rights organization in Venezuela, has the domain derechos.org.ve. We have the domain derechos.org – and over the years we’ve gotten e-mail that was meant for them. Similarly, I expect that some of our e-mail has gone to derechos.com – but c’est la vie.

19 Comments

  1. RJT

    Thanks for posting this. A client received the same email and panicked. I needed to confirm my suspicion that it was a scam.

  2. Azmi

    i recvd twice; 1st on Feb-18-’09 2nd on Mar-17; simmilar pattern but not identical; one from steven@dnrservice.hk while the other from max.wei@fw-chinadnr.net.
    i hope the emails are really scam, if not, i’ll be in deep trouble.
    Thanks.

  3. notCEO

    Hi, just got similar scam from address Daniel song [Daniel.Song@fw-chinadnr.net.cn]:
    (If you are NOT CEO,please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent.Thanks.)
    Dear CEO,
    We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on March 20th, 2009, One company which self-styled “Mater Holdings, Inc” are applying to register ” olympic-casino ” as internet brand and CN domain names as below :
    olympic-casino.cn
    olympic-casino.com.cn
    olympic-casino.net.cn
    olympic-casino.org.cn
    olympic-casino.com.au
    olympic-casino.my
    olympic-casino.com.ph
    olympic-casino.co.nz
    After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company and this “Mater Holdings, Inc” as the same company,there is no need reply to us,We will accept their application and will register those for them immediately.
    If your company has no relationships with that company nor do not authorized,please reply to us within 7 workdays,if we can’t get any information from yours over 7 workdays,we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “Mater Holdings, Inc”.
    Thanks for your cooperation.
    Best Regards,
    Daniel
    Senior Consultant
    ( ( Tel: +0086-021-37529318 ( ( Fax: +0086-021-37529316
    Website: http://www.FW-chinadnr.com.cn
    Address:Room515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District,Shanghai
    Disclaimer:
    This e-mail may constitute privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, you have received this confidential email and any attachments transmitted with it in error and you must not disclose, copy, circulate or in any other way use or rely on this information.and The company accepts no responsibility once an e-mail and any attachments is sent.

  4. alsoNotCEO

    Got the exact same as notCEO from fw-chinadnr.org, so definitely looks like a scam.

  5. Paul

    Just got one of these too from
    Nick Cheng
    Senior Consultant
     Tel: 0086-21-37529318  Fax: 0086-21-37529316
    Website:www.fw-chinadnr.com.cn
    Naughty scamsters …
    The are not on the list of accredited chinese registrars at http://www.cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2005/10/11/3217.htm
    But I guess they could still register your domains and cybersquat them. Don’t know what Chinese law is on cybersquatting – punitive probably!!

  6. Denny Ro

    I think you are not right, these company is the third largest network solutions centre in Asia, who should/will not cheated you. They should be a honest ones.

  7. larry michaels

    I’m being sent e-mails by someone who says they want to use my domain name internationally. How do i verify this is a scam?

  8. Power Chip

    I got the same email a few weeks ago. I knew from the start it’s a scam but i tried to give them impression that i will pay those huge prices for nothing. They were very insistent and always giving me deadlines and i got alot of pone calls from a HK phone number.
    Be carreful everyone, DO NOT PAY A CENT to those scammers.

  9. MHS Babu

    I too received a similar mail:
    From: Tina [mailto:tina@ntwifinetwork.com]
    Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 6:09 AM
    To: sales@
    Subject: Domain Dispute and Registration
    To whom it may concern: 2009-5-22
    We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
    Last week we received a formal application submited by Justin Lin who wanted to use the keyword “xxxxx” 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 him. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his company’s application
    In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.
    Yours sincerely
    Tina
    Checking Department
    Tel: 86 513 8532 2060
    Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
    Email:Tina@ntwifinetwork.com
    Website: http://www.ntwifinetwork.com
    Mail No.:1711860

  10. sean

    Hi
    i got the exact same email, it seems like they copy and paste the email to everyone ..lol…it is 101% scam !!
    ignore them !
    =========================================
    Dear CEO,
    We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application. One company which called ‘xxx Corp’ are applying to register .. May 25, 2009. After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark.These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company has not authorized the aforesaid company to register these, Please contact us as soon as possible.
    In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is 7 days. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by xxxx Corp.
    Best Regards,
    Jeff Xu
    Auditing Department
    Phone:+86-21-3752 9318
    Fax:+86-21-3752 9316
    http://www.fw-publicdomain.org.cn
    Address:Room515, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District, Shanghai, China

  11. Cindy Sue Causey

    Thank you for sharing this, everyone..
    A question comes to Mind to ask of everyone who has received this spam: Did you by any chance have legitimate (legal) correspondence with anyone internationally recently..?
    Asking because I did.. May be totally unrelated but sure is a *wild* coinky-dink to have it occur less than a week later.. 🙂
    Warmest from Talking Rock..

  12. Anonymous

    I received the same email from them. Now they even threaten us in case we don’t pay for their domain registration:
    “If you can not arrange the payment in time.We shall inform your dishonest action around world,let everyone know that your dishonest action.At least no one will doing the business in China with you.
    “We shall consider re-link those Domains to other webpage including the garbage pages.
    If your company can not transfer it in time we also has the rights to deal with those Domain names.
    “Unilateral holder can deal with register those Domain name for it’s own.
    “Declare all: The damages and dissensions due to the Domain name registration we will not bear any legal responsibility.
    Steven Han
    Senior Consultant
     Tel: +0086-021-37529318  Fax: +0086-021-37529316
    Address:Room515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District,Shanghai
    ________________________________________

  13. Ken

    I received the same email from them. Now they even threaten us in case we don’t pay for their domain registration:
    “If you can not arrange the payment in time.We shall inform your dishonest action around world,let everyone know that your dishonest action.At least no one will doing the business in China with you.
    “We shall consider re-link those Domains to other webpage including the garbage pages.
    If your company can not transfer it in time we also has the rights to deal with those Domain names.
    “Unilateral holder can deal with register those Domain name for it’s own.
    “Declare all: The damages and dissensions due to the Domain name registration we will not bear any legal responsibility.
    Steven Han
    Senior Consultant
     Tel: +0086-021-37529318  Fax: +0086-021-37529316
    Address:Room515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District,Shanghai
    ________________________________________

  14. Chase

    I was emailing them back to this email They almost got me 🙂
    oscar.hu@fw-chinesednr.com
    ________________________________________
    发件人:Chase McMichael
    发送时间:2009-06-25 13:10:58
    收件人:oscar.hu@fw-chinesednr.com
    主题:RE: UNBOUND Domain Registration Dispute
    Dear Chase,
    There is several days for this case,but we did not receive any reply form you until now.For your company’s Chinese domain names, we do not know how to handle it.The dispute period will come soon.Pls let us know if you need to register these domain names or not. If need, pls let us know in time, we can send an application form to you. If you think the registration of‘F&I investment inc’or the use of following domain names will not bring any negative effect to your company, I suggest you can give up to register these domain names,then we can only accept ‘F&I investment inc’ application unconditionally.
    Further questions please contact me in time.Thank you for your cooperation.
    Following internet brand and domain names are applied for by‘F&I investment inc’
    Internet Brand:
    UNBOUND
    Domain Name:
    http://www.unboundtech.cn
    http://www.unboundtech.com.cn
    http://www.unboundtech.net.cn
    http://www.unboundtech.org.cn
    http://www.unboundtech.asia
    http://www.unboundtech.hk
    http://www.unboundtech.com.hk
    http://www.unboundtech.tw
    http://www.unboundtech.com.tw
    Best Regards,
    Oscar
    2009-06-29
    ________________________________________
    oscar.hu@fw-chinesednr.com

  15. AMD

    Thanks for posting this, and thanks to everyone else who commented. I received the same type of email and though it looked legitimate enough I couldn’t figure out why I should care if someone registered our domain name with a China suffix. After all, someone could register it with a .org suffix and no one would take any notice. It’s nice to know that my decision to disregard this email was appropriate.

  16. Anonymous

    Thanks for the post. I have a personal website, and it’s not business related. I was scared that someone tried to take my domain name, but your post eased my nerves.
    ———————————————-
    To whom it may concern: 2009-7-27
    We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
    Last week we received a formal application submited by Justin Lin who wanted to use the keyword “<domain name>” 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 him. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his company’s application
    In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.
    Yours sincerely
    Sunny
    Checking Department
    Tel: 86 513 8532 1087
    Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
    Email:Sunny@ntwifinetwork.com
    Website: http://www.ntwifinetwork.com

  17. Kevin Corti

    I’d categorise this more as highly distasteful sales tactics rather than a scam per se as you will end up with a domain name(s) albeit at hugely inflated costs.
    We receive this mail or one like it quite regularly.
    We took a precaution and registered some with idotz.net for $1.95 each / year.
    Kevin
    CEO
    http://www.pixelearning.com

  18. dunkee

    I just received a similar email and they almost got me. Fortunately I ‘refreshed’ my head for a while and decided to research a bit. My suspicion was right, it’s a scam. Here’s my email (you can add it to your list). Thanks for this website!!
    (If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward to the right person/ department, as this is urgent, thank you.)
    Dear CEO,
    We are the department of registration service in China. We have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application On April 12,2010,One company which called ” POLAME INVESTMENT LTD.” are applying to register “exampleabc” as brand name and CN domain names as below:
    exampleabc.asia
    exampleabc.cn
    exampleabc.cn
    exampleabc.com.hk
    exampleabc.com.tw
    exampleabc.hk
    exampleabc.in
    exampleabc.net.cn
    exampleabc.org.cn
    exampleabc.tw
    After our initial checking, we found that the Brand name applied for registration is as same as your company’s name and trademark.so we need to confirm with your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company,please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with this company .please contact us within 7 workdays. If out of the deadline, we willI approve the application submitted by “POLAME INVESTMENT LTD” unconditionally.
    Thanks for your cooperation.
    Best Regards,
    Jock Zhou
    Senior consultant
    Tel; +86-21-37529318
    Fax; +86-21-37529316
    Website; http://www.china-fowa.org.cn
    Address: Room515-516, No.885 Green Ark Building, East Huancheng Road,Fengxian District,Shanghai
    2010-04-12

  19. mtoast

    Hi all I too received a similar one:
    Ps, thanks for letting me know! So stoked I stumbled on this forum.
    (If you are not in charge of this please transfer this urgent email to your CEO, thanks.)
    Dear CEO,
    We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 12, 2010, One company which self-styled “Froade International Trading Co.,LTD” are applying to register “quietu”as brand name and and domain names as below:
    quietu.asia
    quietu.cn
    quietu.com.cn
    quietu.com.hk
    quietu.com.tw
    quietu.hk
    quietu.in
    quietu.tw
    After our initial checking, we found the brand name and and these domain names being applied are as same as your company’s, so we need to get the confirmation from your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with this company, please contact us within 7 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by “Froade International Trading Co.,LTD” unconditionally.
    Best Regards,
    Kevin Fang
    Auditing Dep

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