Is this "Domain Registration Service" email a scam?

Have you received an email telling you that a company in China is trying to register a domain using your name?

It usually comes from a generic sounding registrar like “Asia Domain Registration Service”. Here is an example of the email I got on April 27, 2017:

About the idealever.com, we have some thing to comfirm with you! We are an agency engaging in registering brand name and domain names, on April 21, 2017, we received an application named "Cerbery Company" and they apply to register <your company> as their brand name and some top-level asian domain names. But we found the main body of domain names is same as yours. We are not sure about the relationship between you and them.

As the registrar, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays. After the deadline we will unconditionally finish the registration for "Cerbery Company" Looking forward to your prompt reply.

(Please kindly foward this email to your CEO or appropriate person. Thanks a lot.) 

Best Regards,

These sorts of emails have recognizable characteristics that identify them clearly as a scam.

• They are not sent from any recognizable registrar. Just some generic name like “Asian Domain Registration Service” or "China Domain Registration Center”.
• The grammar is awkward. The first sentence in the example above misspells “some thing” and “comfirm” let alone the odd way it starts.
• There is no logic in what the email is even asking. Ask yourself why would Cerbery Company, in this case, want to register “ideaLEVER” with a .cn domain extension? And if they do, which they won’t anyway so it doesn’t matter, how would it affect me?

As always, question all unsolicited email vigorously. If you decide to open a business in another country you can register any domain with ideaLEVER. There is a top level extension for every country and almost 1000 generic ones now available.