The following email was sent to a domainer and was posted at DNForum.
While slightly believable by some, it entails a method of psychological warfare well-practiced by car salesmen, in order to convince the email recipient that somehow their brand is in imminent danger.
Dear Sir/Madam
I’m sorry to disturb you so abrupt. We are a domain name registration service company in Asia.
On 5th April. we received a formal application submitted by Mr. John Sun who wanted to use the keyword “[removed ]” to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/.asia/ domain names.
After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with him. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his application
As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect Mr. John Sun is a domain investor. so we need you to attach importance to this issue. [address in China removed]
What these Chinese ‘Einsteins’ really meant to say, would fall along the following lines:
Dear Potential Sucker from America,
We are spamming you, having harvested your email illegitimately. We are a team of two high school drop outs with a second hand Pentium II PC, living in the suburbs of Beijing.
Some time after we woke up to take a piss last night, we thought to put to good use the great government controlled firewall of China and the lack of law as it applies internationally. In China, we produce counterfeit goods, cheap toys, steel that rusts and breaks and toxic drywall panels.
After our initial brainstorming, we thought we can make up a fake name and a non-existent application for a Chinese domain, in order to extort some American dollar to support our Communist manifesto and the teachings of Mao.
Please fall prey to our tech-speak propaganda that somehow your .com is being threatened by the .cn TLD which you can’t even register yourself, thanks to our ingenious government’s decision.
Let a thousand flowers blossom, while we buy worthless .cn domains and pitch them at suckers like you for greenbacks. Ni hao!
Being in China myself for business. What you said is 100% accurate.
I get emails like that all the time. I just reply with “yeah, right, thanks for reminding me, I will go register it through my registrar and not through you”
Of course I never go register it but days later I see the my-domain-name.com.cn and name.cn is both taken.
So I send them a followup and go “I hope you know that my domain was not as important as you think. That I was actually going to let the domain expire end of this year. You stupid cheating Chinese just wasted your money trying to extort me on a brand / domain I can care less about.”
I never really get replies after that. But I can imagine they’re feeling a HUGE bit of regret, hehehe. (mission accomplished)