"Bogus" Trademark emails from China

[spinninghill]

Does anyone else get these? I assume they are rubbish.. 99.99% sure at least

Dear Manager:

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Anhui, China. On June,25th,2012, We received keyya company's application that they are registering the name "sportspartners" as their Internet Trademark and "sportspartners.cn","sportspartners.com.cn" ,"sportspartners.asia"domain names etc.,It is China and ASIA domain names.But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so I am sending you this Email to check.According to the principle in China,your company is the owner of the trademark,In our auditing time we can keep the domain names safe for you firstly, but our audit period is limited, if you object the third party application these domain names and need to protect the brand in china and Asia by yourself, please let the responsible officer contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!

Kind regards

Angela Zhang

[Couple It]

lol haven't seen one of these for about six months. Yes, they're bogus. Just like the invoices I'm getting atm from eastern European countries about my international patent

Wendy

[SimplyReplica]

Shouldnt admit this, but boy i love those emails.. it provides a good little giggle in my otherwise robust day!

We better get our cheque books out, i am waiting for my arabian princess to bequeath me millions.. for just a small up front donation i will share it, when it gets here.. apparently its been sent, although western union are holding the process up!

Cheers
Jason

[Ytelco]

Yep... a bit of a sales scam.

If you do a search, you'll find that sportspartners.com.cn (along with the others) is still available for registration.

These emails are sent in the hope that the recipient just hands over the $$$ (or 元 in this case). Generally at massively over-inflated prices.

[onsiteTECHS]

Yes these emails are quite common and are usually a scam - in my experience especially if they originate in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, India, etc.

My rule of thumb is to ignore any emails about your domain name unless it originates from the company you purchased your domain name through or your hosting company / website developer. This is especially true for invoices.

Bear in mind also, that sometimes the emails we receive from our legitimate domain registration companies are, even if not a scam, a little misleading - they can sometimes play on your fears in an effort to up sell you by telling you to purchase all known variants of your domain name (for example if you own acme.com.au, they will suggest it's a good idea to purchase acme.com, acme.net, acme.org) - this can become quite an expensive proposition as there are thousands of different variants, and now you can even apply to own all of .acme for $200k!

I usually recommend customers stick to .com.au if it's available, perhaps .com if they have an international audience and the other country domains and Top Level Domains only if they have a genuine need and / or unlimited budgets that are weighing them down.

Cheers,
John

[JacquiPryor]

The auDA put out a consumer alert about these somewhere around 2008, so good 'em for still trying I suppose.

@Wendy - aurgh that will drive you crazy! I imagine you are probably receiving a few at the moment, and there's probably more to come... not sure if it's the same for patents, but a lot go out to trademark applicants - and, I have a handy list of company names to watch out for... will shoot you a copy by email in the morning.

[SimplyReplica]

Must always remember... These scams operate like a fisherman shooting a shotgun into the river and praying that they hit something.... Unfortunately, they do hit something sometimes and some poor soul if taken for a ride..

Was just chatting with my local banker the other day and she advised me that early last month (ps.. lil off topic) they had a customer come in to create an account to allow an international charity to process funds from Australia through his personal bank account of which he would be cordially awarded a small percentage to allow this.

The banker stated that they advised him it was a scam, it was a tried scam from ages ago and that he should steer clear completely from this and actually refused to open his account and referred the matter to the fraud department.. Client was obsessed by seeing potential dollars and was willing to give all he could (as he was not sending money he thought he'd try) to reap the benefits of the charity..

OH COME ON!

Cheers
Jason