After being made redundant 2 years ago, I set up my own business. I used a business registry company to register my business name, email address and website (a .co.uk one)

A few days ago I got an email from someone with a hotmail account saying they were registering a website with the same name as mine, but .org, and asked me what I wanted to do about it, "what's your intention with regards to your domain?". They included information in their email which showed they had checked my business out via various business registers.

6 Months before this I was contacted by a US company offering to sell me the .org address, which I ignored. My business is small (wont ever be big!) and will only ever be uk based, so I wasn't interested in the extortionate cost.

So do the owners of websites get these requests and if so, what do you do?

It's just another way people are trying to make money. Buy up domains that are similar to existing businesses then try and sell them to the original company

Most likely a scam. Keep the emails incase they try to pass off your company via their domain and take to icann if they do.

Otherwise ignore

Thanks guys,

They haven't sent another email since, but I do hang onto things, so I'll file it and keep an eye on what happens to the site they were "registering"

When setting up an ecommerce business I would always purchase the other domain names with the other popular extensions aswell (.net, .com, .co.uk)

Its not a massive expense / upkeep but will keep other companies / rivals / scammers off your 'patch'.