Shanghai IDC – smells scammy

Mix vague language, chinglish (chinese-english), and an important message about your brand…And you have a very rotten smelling email:

“We are Shanghai IDC Network Information & Technology Co.,Ltd, which is the domain name registration organization in China, which mainly deal with international company’s in china. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Sep 13, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named ” XXX Investment (China) Co., Ltd” apply to register ” YYY” as Internet brand keyword and Chinese domain name,which involve internet intellectual property right of your company.

These days we are dealing with it. In order to deal with this issue better, Please contact me by telephone or email as soon as possible. “

Some googling turns up a number of folks like me going, calling this scammy or phishy, but no one has really got an exact report. The company is legitimate, but their website (govidc.org.cn) is full of information in chinglish (or just deceptively vague, but inflammatory) articles about protecting your brand and domains, so this must be their primary business.

Our Shanghai sister company already owns our brand-domain.cn, so the email was doubly confusing, but even more likely to be junk.

Now that I’ve shared this email with you, I’m going to go delete it. Or maybe I should send a reply first: “These days we are dealing with it.” LOL!