Scammers can steal your content and upload it under a spoofed domain in a matter of minutes for several purposes:
Creating ads under the genuine brand name and stealing traffic
Using look-alike sites that mimic your official website
Creating phishing websites to steal users’ personal and financial information
Red Points’ domain monitoring service scans search engines and domain databases to automatically detect and report spoofed and phishing domains in 3 main steps:
Detect fake domains on:
Report domain takedown right away:
Stop repeat infringers:
Fraudulent domains pretend to be the legitimate channels of one or more brands. Most commonly, they appear in the following formats:
Selling counterfeit products from various brands illegitimately
Selling your brand and mimicking your
official site
When someone copies your official website they negatively impact:
80%
enforcement success rate on fake websites removal
1-7 days
average domain
takedown time
1,200+ clients
from all industries
worldwide
What is a domain monitoring?
Domain monitoring refers to the process of detecting fake and phishing domains negatively impacting your brand’s reputation and revenue. When monitoring domains manually and on an individual basis, this process can be extremely time-consuming, especially since scammers often use a range of techniques to evade detection efforts. Red Points’ domain monitoring software scans domain databases to automatically detect and report fake domains before they hurt your brand.
Why is domain monitoring important?
A common threat that you want to protect your domain name against is known as domain name squatting. The technique is used by infringers who register a domain in the name of an existing brand or a slightly different version of a registered domain with malicious intent.
Proactively monitoring your domain will ensure you can take proactive actions against scammers copying your website. One way of doing it is by sending a cease-and-desist letter to the site admin or domain registrant of the fake website. You can usually get this information from domain registrant search services like ICANN. In parallel, notify the domain registrar about the misuse. Registrars like GoDaddy.com are aware of the problem and might be able to help you.
Is domain name squatting legal?
If you are currently struggling with domain name squatting, the fact that domain name squatting is considered illegal in the US and many other countries and that you are legally protected may give you some relief.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the US Federal government have established special legislation acts and policies to protect trademark owners from domain name squatting/cybersquatting, mainly with the ACPA (Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act).
ACPA, as the name suggests, is Federal legislation regulating the registration of domain names to prevent people from registering domain names that are identical or unmistakably similar to trademarked brand names (and, to some extent, individual names). Besides ACPA, there are also other legislation acts like Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDNDRP) that can provide protection for trademark and service mark owners from being attacked by domain name squatting practices.
With these legislations in place, when someone owns a domain name that is substantially related or similar to a trademarked name, they have to prove their legal intent in owning this domain name, or else it will be considered bad faith registration with malicious intent, and may be forced to transfer or forfeit this domain name.
How to prevent domain name squatting scams?
Claiming your domain names won’t stop malicious cybercriminals from impersonating your squatting similar domain names and exploiting your brand identity.
Monitoring all your domains 24/7 is ideal, but it would be very time-consuming and difficult to do manually.
Red Points’ Domain Monitoring Services make the entire process easier. Our domain name monitoring service can automate the process of finding and removing fake accounts, apps, websites, and domains, allowing you to continuously protect your brand identity, reputation and revenue in real-time.
Red Points’ solution uses AI-powered search technology to scan the internet 24/7 for any kind of brand impersonation and prevent and protect from fake and phishing domains through automatic enforcement, reporting, and takedown.
