An email being sent to the business and not for profit clients of New Zealand lawyers could end up with the recipient paying for unnecessary domain name "protection".

The unsolicited email often contains the first line "(It's very urgent, please transfer this email to your CEO. Thanks)".

It purports to be from a "Network Service Company" which is the domain name registration centre in a Chinese city. The "helpful" writer says that a company (which never seems to come up in a Google search) is planning to register domain names containing the recipient organisation's name.

The recipient is offered the opportunity to get in first and register their domain names. Information from people and organisations which have been drawn into the scheme indicates that registration is extremely costly - and totally unnecessary.

The New Zealand Law Society has included an example of the scam as received by a New Zealand organisation in its Email Scam Information section.