Threatening emails from registrars in China

[humour]

Recently for domains I own I have been getting suspicious emails from China.


Synopsis below : PLEASE tell me if I should be concerned. Recommend some actions I should take if any.

Situation
-----------
I own domain example : mydomain.com

Which promotes a brick and mortar bonafide company I own in Canada.

a) Receive email from China stating Company 3rd party company XXX wishes to register

mydomain.cn
mydomain.info
mydomain.biz
etc
etc

b) I am not about to try and secure EVERY single domain.extension in the world, I am not a global company, I am a medium sized firm in Canada that does some exporting mainly to the USA.

c) I email the Chinese registrar saying - mydomain is my legitimate business - they say the third party either wants to confuse the marketplace or compete with my business. They can help me register these domain extensions .cn, .mobi etc (for a cost of course)

d) I quickly lock the .mobi extensions because rightly or wrongly I see value in them

Any IMMEDIATE help appreciated I am now down to 2 days before they let the 3rd party register the extensions.

Thanks in advance

Howie

 

[mgstudent]

Howie, Not sure what the problem is. Let them register the .cn, .info etc.
If they do register them then they'll probably won't renew them.

Also if they are even semi-serious about trying to compete with you and confuse the marketplace, in my opinion you will most likely benefit from this.

Can you see your Canadian or American customers visiting .cn, .info, .whatever before they visit your .com?

Any competing that they do (if any) will most likely drive traffic to your site :yes:

I wouldn't even bother emailing them again - some people get off on stirring things and causing trouble.

 

[Ridge]

This is probably a promotion tactic. there more than likely is no third party they just want you to register the domains with them.

 

[humour]

I appreciate both replies.

It was my gut instinct to let them do what they want.... sounded like a scare tactic with the intent that I would register with them.

I have pasted for others to reference the content of the first email they sent me but I have changed details to protect the "registrar", the 3rd party and myself.

Dear CEO

We are "Some company in Shanghai", which is the domain name register company in China. I have something need to confirm with you. We have received an application formally, one company named "M**** H*******" applies for

The domain names:
mydomain.biz
mydomain.cn
mydomain.com.cn
mydomain.hk
mydomain.info
mydomain.mobi
mydomain.net.cn
mydomain.org.cn
mydomain.tw

The Internet Brand Name:
mydomain

on the internet October 10 2007. We need to know the opinion of your company, because the domain names and keywords may relate to the usufruct of brand name on Internet.

We would like to get the affirmation of your company, please contact us by telephone or E-mail as soon as possible. Please let someone in your company who is responsible for trademark or intellectual right contact me freely.


Best Regards,

 

[mgstudent]

If you ever get something like this and think it might be a scam it probably is. And this couldn't smell more like a scam if it tried.

I pasted 2 sentences (from the email you pasted above) into Google and there are lots of people talking about this scam.

Here's 1 link in another forum about this scam. (just scroll down to the third post)

Anyways don't worry about it and if I was you I'd stick to .com's and .ca's which is where your business is.

.biz/.net/.eu - aren't good for anything at the moment in my opinion.
.cn's are great (if you have a business in China!)