Question Does anyone know what this email means - Virtual Assistant Forums

Offsite Office Professionals · #1 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

I received this email and I'm not sure what it means. Anyone have any idea?

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are the domain name registration organization in China, which mainly deal with international company's domain names and keywords in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the July 2, We have received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “offsiteofficepro” as their domain names and Internet keyword in Chinese area.

Since after our investigation we found that this word has been in using by your company, and this may include your company name or trade mark, so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names or internet keywords are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first. contact us soon. Thanks for your co-operation and support.

In order to avoid the law problems invovled,we need to confirm with you first.If you consider these domain names are not important,please don't reply this email,we will cooperate with the third company

Stewartwin · #2 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

It sounds like it is either a scam (don't send them any information until they are verified), or someone else is trying to register your domain. Be careful!

Offsite Office Professionals · #3 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Yes, they listed their domain in the salutation so I checked with whois and there is no such domain listed. I sent a copy of the email to Bluehost where I have my domain registered to see what they have to say. There is no way I'm going to send any information to them since their domain isn't legitimate. Thanks for the feedback.

Wordpro Wizard · #4 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Sounds like a scam through and through. A non-existant domain name is a big red flag and the poor english sounds like the ones we all get from the Nigerian scammers.

Lynne

hdmrobinson · #5 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Definitely wait to see what Bluehost says. It sounds incredibly fishy.

Olinda Services · #6 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

A client received a similar email 18 months ago and it was a scam. Ignore it!

Business-Bytes · #7 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Jenny, do you use Bluehost's privacy feature? This may be how this "company" got your information. The privacy feature used to be free with Bluehost, but now I see they charge $4.95 a year for it. Maybe check this out in your settings?

Offsite Office Professionals · #8 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Jules, I signed up for the Bluehost privacy feature so it should be in place. This was an email to my company email address which is @offsiteofficepro.com and it's posted on my site. I think I might add offsiteofficepro(TM) to the footer on all my pages.

Business-Bytes · #9 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Originally Posted by Offsite Office Professionals

Jules, I signed up for the Bluehost privacy feature so it should be in place. This was an email to my company email address which is @offsiteofficepro.com and it's posted on my site. I think I might add offsiteofficepro(TM) to the footer on all my pages.

Okay, I see. What I think has happened is that your email address was harvested, so adding (TM) won't stop that. I tend to not use my email address on sites unless formatted using spaces and the word 'at' in place of the @ and the word 'dot' for the period before com/net, etc (EX: you at offsiteofficepro dot com [most actual humans know this is your email, but they need to format it correctly if contacting you]). It's more work, but I use a php CAPTCHA form that takes care of harvesting of emails on my sites (I put a 'contact' or 'contact me' link that goes to the form).

Irritating, isn't it? Sheesh.

Offsite Office Professionals · #10 (**permalink**) 07-04-2009

Very irritating! This is kind of like closing the barn door after the horse gets out but I'll try your suggestion for the email address. Thanks!

Wordpro Wizard · #11 (**permalink**) 07-05-2009

Personally I've always used my proper business email address. If a prospective client has to fiddle about or, even worse, fill in a form they just move on to the next till they find an email address they can click on and say "hi, I need ...., can you help me?".

How often have you, in looking for something via the web, moved right on because there was no clear email address or phone number? I know I do, always. How many successful companies hide their precise contact (email, phone number and location) information? Spam emails, just delete. I especially like the ones that want me to buy something to enhance a part of anatomy I don't have

Just my two pennyworth.

Lynne

virtual writing · #12 (**permalink**) 07-05-2009

My hosting company received an alert because of the visibility of my email address on my site, and they wanted me to change it. Since I use it everywhere, that wasn't an option, but I did change to spelling out the address with 'at' and 'dot' etc. I hope I got around the inconvenience of it by repeating it lots of times on my website, and also having a contact form which visitors can fill in and send without revealing my email.

Offsite Office Professionals · #13 (**permalink**) 07-05-2009

I need to add a contact form since my email address is readable when you hover over the 'contact me' and such on my site. I did spell out the address on my privacy policy.

Business-Bytes · #14 (**permalink**) 07-05-2009

Darn guys, earlier today I was browsing around here and saw a topic about email address "encryption" (not sure if that was what it was called

) that Tess or Hamid or someone created...basically you could use that on your site(s) and your email addy would be protected from harvesters, etc.

If I find the topic again I'll post a link to it, or if anyone else finds it, please post.

ETA: I found the link! It's an email encoder - very cool!
Quick email encoder - antispam

CMColeman · #15 (**permalink**) 07-05-2009

Thanks Jules! I am going to check this out now.