Technically, this one’s not a phishing scam. But someone at UD reported receiving an email message this morning that, in part, implied that UD should spend some money to protect the “udel Network Brand” in China:
Subject: Regarding ” udel” Dispute
We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 3, 2012. One company which self-styled “Sailon Industrial Co., Ltd” were applying to register “udel” as Network Brand and following domain names:
- udel.com.cn
- udel.com.tw
- udel.hk
- udel.in
- udel.net.cn
- udel.org.cn
- udel.tw
After our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “Sailon Industrial Co., Ltd”.
People around the Internet have noted these scams for the last 3-4 years. For example, Chad Perrin explained what many of these scams are trying to do in a 2009 entry in his TechRepublic blog:
It appears that a new class (new to me, at least) of scam targeting the fear of domain squatters has arisen. In this attempt to con you out of your hard-earned money, you receive an email that claims someone is trying to register domain names that will either be sold to you later at exorbitant prices if you want them or used to create brand confusion, stealing your customers. Hints at violating, or even “stealing”, your trademarks may be woven into the broken English in this alarming email.
Obviously, if you receive a message like this one, delete it.
