Alert: Internet domain name & keyword

My clients have received emails purporting to originate from China advising a company is registering domains in the .cn, .asia using their domain name. Today I received one as well. This was good as I was able to check where the email came from.

The email had the subject: Internet domain name & keyword

The body starts with the following:

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China and Asia.
On September.29th,2010, We received HAITONG company's application that they are registering the name " onlineconnections " as their Internet Keyword and " onlineconnections .cn "、" onlineconnections .com.cn " 、" onlineconnections .asia "domain names etc..,It is China and ASIA domain names.But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so I am sending you this Email to check.

I checked this email and it does appear to come from China. It is not possible for me to tell whether it is legitimate, spam or fraudulent. My suggestion to clients is to decided whether or not those domains are of important to them and then use a registrar they know and trust to register the domains.

I personally would not respond to these emails and thus delete them. There is no way for me to easily tell if this email is legitimate but it isn't worth the risk of responding.

Kelvin Eldridge