Security Alert, Please Read - Chinese Domain Name Scam

byKnightstone

265 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Thought to be Legit at First

Twelve days before Christmas of 2019, my office received an email (claiming to be) from ‘Adrian Liu from China’. The address associated with this email is:

adrian(@)chinaregistry(dot)org(dot)cn

Seeing a site-specific domain, we thought it to be legit at first.

The email was either a set-up to hold our company’s name for ransom in China or more likely, to simply encourage us to purchase likely fraudulent domains to ‘protect’ our company and aquire our payment information.

What is 'The China Registry Head Office'?

The author of the email, Adrian Liu, claimed to be from the China domain name registration center called The China Registry Head Office at 6012, Xingdi Building, No. 1698 Yishan Road, Shanghai 201103, China.

The email claimed that on December 9, 2019, the Chinese agency received an application from Kanghong Ltd. to use our company’s name as their internet keyword and China domain name(s) including the .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn and .org.cn versions of our company name.

What did they Want?

Liu asked, in the initial email, if our United States based company was associated with Kanghong Ltd., stating the China Registry’s initial due diligence points towards Kanghong Ltd.’s request to be in conflict with our company name.

At first, they asked only for an email confirmation of whether we were affiliated with Kanghong Ltd. Not knowing it was a scam, our reply was little more than a simple ‘Thank you.’ and a ‘No.’

Shortly thereafter, two more emails arrived; one from Adrian Liu and another from a Gareth Jing.

Jing’s email came from a G-mail account and stated very aggressively he intended to do business under our company name in China.

The address associated with Gareth Jings email is:

GarethJing(@)gmail(dot)com

In not seeing a site-specific domain for Kanghong Ltd. associated with Mr. Jings email, we began to find the situation curious.

We emailed an inquiry to 'Adrian'.

Adrian Liu’s reply email stated there was 'little to be done' on his/her end to stop Gareth Jing or Kanghong Ltd…’little to be done’…not ‘nothing to be done’.

Enter the Scam

Liu suggested we could purchase the .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn and .org.cn versions of our company name, thereby effectively blocking Kanghong Ltd. from doing on-line business in China using our company’s name.

Liu then offered to email us a price list for the Chinese domain names.

Who are Adrian Liu & Gareth Jing?

Spidey senses firing by this time, my office did some vetting of Adrian Liu and of Gareth Jing. The plethora of information on these two names is as readily available to you as it was to my office. On-line records of this Chinese domain name scam go back several years.

Now that we were certain this was a scam, curiosity took hold and a longer return email was sent; this time thanking Adrian for all the hard work during this ‘dispute period’ (Adrian’s words) and requesting the price list suggested. We were curious the price.

How Much do they Want?

A price list from Adrian arrived in PDF form. After little deliberation, it was elected we not open it for security reasons. The curiosity still gnaws at a few of us.

How much does Adrian want as payment for each Chinese domain? This is a question we will not be able to answer. When the email was deleted, the unopened PDF went with it.

Have you Experienced This?

Fortunately, we realized this was a scam before it was too late. Know this, the emails looked very legitimate. Thankfully, no damage was done.

Have you had any experiences with Adrian Liu, Gareth Jing, CNRegistry, The China Registry Head Office, Kanghong Ltd or any other member of the scam claiming to be on 1698 Yishan Road, Shanghai 201103, China? If so, please share with everyone in the comments below.

Thank you for reading. Be safe.

Best regards,

Knightstone