If you own a website, chances are high you’ve received the Dear CEO scam email:

This scam has been hanging around for over years.

It reads:

Dear CEO,

(It’s very urgent, please transfer this email to your CEO. If this email affects you, we are very sorry, please ignore this email. Thanks)

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in China.
We received an application from Hua Hai Ltd on May 14, 2019. They want to register ” _______________ ” as their Internet Keyword and ” _______________ .cn “、” _______________.com.cn ” 、” _______________ .net.cn “、” _______________ .org.cn ” 、” _______________ .asia “domain names, they are in China and Asia domain names. But after checking it, we find ” _______________ ” conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not?

Best Regards

**************************************

Mike Zhang | Service Manager

Cn YG Domain (Head Office)

This one came via a customer last week. It’s a bog standard scam designed to trick the reader into responding out of fear.  The  Dear CEO scam appears to be warning the web owner, they may have issues with their domain name. The sender buries the reader in a bunch of useless information making it difficult to parse what the message is actually saying. In fact, it’s just one more piece of junk hitting your inbox. I posted a podcast covering a few details about it here so, give it a listen.

But, the short answer to your question “should I be worried” is “NO. Delete it and move on with your day.  Email scams are a dime-a-dozen, but they are getting far more sophisticated, so use a lot of caution when dealing with any unsolicited email.  If in doubt, don’t respond and ask for a second opinion. You can always copy and paste the message into Google to see if it pops up as a reported scam.