Applicants and holders of national and international trademarks and domain names frequently receive misleading e-mails and mail of untrustworthy providers containing dubious offers for directory registrations and/or the registration of top-level-domains [TLD], e.g.: .asia.cn, .com.cn, .net.cn and .org.cn, of their domain names and/or for services for the exploitation or the geographical extension of the protection of their trademarks.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), some national trademark offices and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) have issued warnings with regards to such misleading methods: