I got the following email at the joelsgulch.com address…
Dear CEO,
(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. If this email affects you, we are very sorry, please ignore this email. Thanks)
We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in China.
We received an application from Huadu Ltd on July 31, 2017. They want to register ” joelsgulch ” as their Internet Keyword and ” joelsgulch .cn “、” joelsgulch .com.cn ” 、” joelsgulch .net.cn “、” joelsgulch .org.cn ” 、” joelsgulch .asia ” domain names, they are in China and Asia domain names. But after checking it, we find ” joelsgulch ” conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not?Best Regards,
Jim | Service Manager
Domain Registry Asia (Head Office) (etc)
…and maybe it’s really just a robomail from the-place-where-they-do-domain-name-registrations-in-China, but also maybe it’s some sort of scam. I’m not going to respond in any case but I always feel like such an idiot when I can’t spot the scam.
So help an old guy out. What’s the scam here?
My “response” would be BLOCK & DELETE.
But what do I know?
My best guess is that if you respond, you’ll find that you can preemptively register all the chinese versions of joelsgulch for the low, low price of….
I’m guessing that this is a multipart thing. You tell them “no”, they say “great, we just need a little info for verification”, etc, etc. What’s the end goal? I dunno. Maybe enough to get at the payment details for your domain registration? Or to get into your Paypal?
Scam. The fact that “Jim” (really asian-sounding name there) says the application for domain registry is attempting to register a key word is enough. It’s most likely a SEO scam, but could be attempting to con you into registering the other domain names at hyper-inflated prices
Like I said . . .
HOT DAMN! We can register “internet keywords”! Yeah, sure we can, scammer. You could always send them a message that says you’d like to register joelsgulch.org.cn, but you need to send them a bank check for more than the amount, please give the difference to the courier that will show up, he will transfer the document pertaining to the authentic Bank of Nigeria Royal Family account, giving you access to $5.9 million dollars, God bless you and I shall pray for you, sincerely Prince Harriet Bigboote.
That almost sounds sarcastic, C6. 🙂
Delete it, answering just encourages the scammous bastards, though I do like the cut of czechsix’s jib.
Answer and they peg you for a patsy, sell your addy or try to sell you who knows what, then you will start getting spamm invites from thousands of “hot russian babes” or other mail order bride purveyors 🙂
I think sevesteen has it right. It’s just a blast to all *.com domain owners to try to get you to buy the other domain names. You can bet Apple already owns http://www.apple.cn, etc., because it would matter to them.
I think several years ago the Feds didn’t think to grab the whitehouse.com domain (whitehouse.gov was the real one) and someone grabbed it and set it up as porn site.
Safe to ignore, unless you think some Chinese hermit is going to steal your thunder!
Cheers
terrapod:
How do I contact these “hot russian babes”? Asking on behalf of a shy, single friend…
Robert
Spam filter in Gmail sweeps all of them into junk file automatically, I do mass deletes daily but can forward if you REELY REELY want them, don’t want to melt the intertubes 😉
On second thought, he can find his own woman. 🙂
There’s levels of scams ‘out there’ – this looks fairly tame. Probably selling alternative Top Level Domains, offering to transfer your domain registration to them, or search engine optimisation services – maybe all the above. Additionally they’ll probably sell your contact info to anyone they can if you ‘ping’ them back.
The ones that are really insidious are the ones with malicious links (to malware ridden websites or false form submits) that try to identify themselves to you as mailserver admins or your hosting or registration provider.
It’s a good idea to know who your domain registrar and your hosting provider is and ignore anything that isn’t obviously from them. It’s also not a bad idea to keep a paper hardcopy of info related to any domains and hosting co’s you deal with – passwords and verification questions – phone numbers and website links – and the info you’ve provided them – like your contact info for when your registration comes due.
Over the years I’ve wound up owning a small handful of domains and administering a few more. It’s to a point where I just keep a spreadsheet so I don’t lose track of that info. As to the email management – that’s what the “select all” toggle is – right before “delete”. Now if it was people wanting to send me money – I’d take a different view of the matter!