It’s been around a while, but it’s well worth covering again as unfortunately the scammers convince more and more people that they need to pay over the odds for domain names – particularly .cn and .asia as well as some curious sounding things such as ‘internet keyword’ registration.
If you cast you mind back to 2012, that’s when we first covered it in our original article. The text has changed, but the scam itself is identical.
I’ve been in computing for a while now and I have to be honest, I have no idea what internet keyword registration is – except snake oil.
There’s many personas that try to carry off this scam. The most recent one we’ve come across is a lady called Cynthia Lee. She is an Executive Manager at an organisation called ‘Sysl’.
So, how does it go?
Dear Sir,
E-mail received 26th June 2019
The important affair is about your company name XXXXX registration,please forward it to your company’s leader.
Recently we received the registration application from Shanghai Sun Co.,Ltd,they want to register the XXXXX brand name and some domain names. As an authoritative and responsible registrar,we need to confirm if the company is your company’s cooperative partner. Also we need to verify whether you have allowed the company to apply these names.
Waiting for your response.
Best Regards,
Cynthia Lee
Executive Manager
Address:Floor 12, Baida CBD Building, 360 West Changjiang Road,Hefei Anhui, China
Tel: (+86) 07395 2159 80
Fax:(+86) 07395 2159 80
Sounds legit? Well, maybe it might do so if it wasn’t in pigeon English and littered with grammatical errors. I’m not Shakespeare, but this is a pretty poor attempt.
Conclusion
Avoid like the plague! This is a scam. No one’s after your domains. Well, maybe they are (there’s always customers on the lookout for potential domains), but these people are looking to bleed you dry rather than help you out.
Over at Squelch Design, they’ve got a nice article about how Matt Lowe followed this e-mail to it’s logical destination – i.e. please hand over lots of money for mysterious things. A good article that’s well worth a read!