I always love the ingenuity of some people, but if you don't know any better, you could easily fall for ones like this. Basically what they do is send you an email, stating that they are an "official" registrar of some extension, and that someone is attempting to register your domain in that particular extension, and out of the goodness of their hearts, and key investigative skills, would like to give you the opportunity to protect your brand by registering your domain in the off extensions. Here is an example from a Chinese company: Now the noob would freak out and think that he needs to protect his name and register through this company so that another company doesn't take it. I sent a reply, just to get theirs: and they replied: Never mind the horrible English, the website also looks suspect (as I knew it would). Just thought I would share that with everyone, so they know what to look out for. These are not real. They are merely registrars (if you are lucky) trolling for noobs that they can fake out into registering domains through them. Besides that, in this instance, China doesn't care about piracy, copyright infringement, or trademarks, they are one of the biggest violators in the world of bootleg, stolen and copied stuff. You could register 100 domains, and it still won't protect you from Chinese piracy.