One of our clients called today after receiving a suspicious email. The subject line is “Notice: Brand name ***** dispute ASIA”. It’s a scam. You can pretty much ignore every email you receive pertaining to your domain name unless it comes from a) your web designer, or b) your original domain name registrar.
Here’s what the email looks like:
“We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china. we have something need to confirm with you. we formally received an application on April 30, 2010. one company which called “VSC Investment Company” are applying to register “thermokingedmonton” as Brand Name and the following Domain Names: ***** After our initial examination, we found that the Domain Names 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 is 7 workdays. if your company files no reply within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by VSC Investment Company”
There are variations of this email going around with different motives. If you receive the email, chuck it.
Reference URL 1: http://www.firetrust.com/en/blog/chris/domain-name-scams
Reference URL 2: http://www.rumblepup.com/chinese-domain-name-fraud/
Website Survival Guide 
thanks for the post. i got a similar email from “ken wang” and when i googled it i found this, and found the templates to be almost identical. scammers.
haha! got one here from Peter Yan…
I presumed it was a scam but thanks for providing a quick confirmation.
For the benefit of anybody searching for one of the terms in the email I include my version below:
——————————————————————————–
From: ken.wang@nic-china.com [mailto:ken.wang@nic-china.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 3:57 PM
To: your-review
Subject: Concerning ” hkfastfacts”brand name dispute
(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 which needs to confirm with you. We formally received an application on March 28, 2011. One company called “Corval Serve Trading Co., Ltd” is applying to register ” hkfastfacts” as Brand name and domain names as below:
hkfastfacts.asia
hkfastfacts.cn
hkfastfacts.com.cn
hkfastfacts.com.hk
hkfastfacts.com.tw
hkfastfacts.hk
hkfastfacts.in
hkfastfacts.tw
After our initial checking, we found the Brand name and domain names being applied are as same as your company! So we need confirmation with your company. If the aforementioned company is your business partner or your subsidiary, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you don't have any relationship with this company, please contact us within 5 workdays. If over the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by “Corval Serve Trading Co., Ltd” unconditionally.
Best Regards,
Ken Wang
Senior consultant
2011-03-29
ken.wang@nic-china.com，ken.wang@nic-china.com
2011-03-29
Ours was from Mike Chen 🙂
You have uploaded a great website.
Take a look at my page … australian domain names
Monkey asses