14 DAY TRIAL // In case you receive an email from a domain name registration service from Asia, particularly China, in which you’re told that someone wants to register some domain names that are similar to your brand, you should know that you’re dealing with scammers.
These types of scams have been around for about ten years, but experts say they’re still making the rounds.
ESET Senior Research Fellow David Harley has received such an email from the “department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China.” The message informed him that a company named “BU&TN Global Investment Co” was attempting to register ESET as their brand name.
“Now we are handling this registration and after our initial checking, we found the names are similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names,” the scammy emails read.
They continue, “If you authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. But if you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we could handle this issue better. After the deadline, we will unconditionally finish the registration for BOL Investment Co.”
As Harley highlights, this particular scam is not very well thought out. The scammers use one company name in the first part of the email, then another name in the second part.
Those who respond are told that they can prevent others from registering the brand name by registering the domain themselves. Of course, registering the domain is not free.
If you come across such emails, be sure to ignore them. It’s clear that there are still people who fall for the scam, otherwise the scammers would probably move on to a different tactic.