Got this email (for a non-related site I maintain) and noticed a lot of people asking about it.
The email has the subject of “Filing Suit” or “Suit Filed” which should get almost anybodies attention rather quickly.
“We have been informed of the website(s) you’r company owns, registered through Go Daddy Domains.”
The message came from an address at novelideas-regos.com, some have been from “Mauro Blackwell” or “Willis Porter” but it’s probably just random generated names. The novelideas-books.com domain does exist, but the novelidea-regos.com and novelidea-hasta.com domains do not resolve at all. My guess is the site was hijacked and had the excel file uploaded to a directory, and then these people sent out all these emails from unassociated domains.
Seeing the distribution of email addresses and senders, plus the terribly written email, without a specific definition of what domain/site would have infringed, I’m going to assume this some kind of spam/phishing attempt/etc. Worse it directs people to view an online excel spreadsheet to find out which domains have ‘infringed’ which would be a totally boneheaded thing to do. (Don’t open the file!)
Very few search results came up for this, so if you’ve heard anything different , have received this yourself recently or have any more detail, please share. There is a link about it over on namepros posted yesterday (external site: namepros.com).
Update: I seem to have found the source text for this email. The text looks like it was a modified version of a threat that someone received (external site: lazymanandmoney.com) from MonaVie back in August of 2009
2 responses to “Filing Suit” – Unfamiliar email scam going about this weekend.
The trademark registration numbers are actual Mona Vie trademarks. You can check them out at uspto.gov.
One of my clients got this email yesterday and started worrying that they were actually going to get sued. I called Mona Vie to make sure that they knew about this. I got their General Counsel’s Voice Mail–we’ll see what they have to say when they call back.
Hi, they are Mona Vie trademarks, however the original ‘Suit Filed / Filing Suit’ message is severely lacking in content. If you look at the original link which has the ‘spam’ message but no content, only a link to an xls spreadsheet, and then look at the second link I posted you will see a drastic difference between the qualified letter(second one, with infringing site, content, etc listed right in the email) vs the other one which comes across as a poorly modified hack of the original message, has no detail, and expects someone to download an XLS document out of fear. I would be interested in seeing what you hear back, but I don’t think it’s valid just from what I’ve seen here. Thanks for your comment!
“Filing Suit” – Unfamiliar email scam going about this weekend.
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