Problems of Online Cybersquatting & Brandjacking Worrying Marketers

According to the statistics of a recent poll involving marketers, more and more marketers are worried about Internet loopholes pertaining to cybersquatting and brandjacking. CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Council conducted the poll along with MarkMonitor, the brand-protection organization.

Security analysts state that, while brandjacking takes place when an external (or third) party exploits the reputation, status and slogan of a brand for facilitating its own information exchanges, cybersquatting relates to trafficking, registering or maliciously employing a particular domain name to benefit from some other trademark's goodwill.

Moreover, the survey further discovered that brand reputation, integrity, trust and value are considerably hampered due to knockoffs in the gray market. These knockoffs are happening because of e-mail scams, which are used to disseminate malware, launch phishing attacks and committing other types of cyber crime.

Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council, states that savvy and sophisticated brand extortionists as well as online scammers are increasingly victimizing unwary consumers with fake websites/e-mail and spoofed brand names. They lure and deal to ensnare, extort as well as expose users to identity theft, financial loss and malware infection, as reported by DarkReading on May 11, 2009.

Frederick Felman, Chief Marketing Officer of MarkMonitor, further states that brand attacks irrespective of the mode (whether through phishing, Internet scams or cybersquatting) affect the reputation and integrity of the brand since the malevolent activities directly relate to the customers and affect their perception about the brand's value, as reported by DarkReading on May 11, 2009.

Meanwhile, to fight the Internet assaults, the key marketers have started monitoring the Net and also engaged third party vendors to eradicate the misuse of trademarks and brand names as well as to obliterate cybersquatting. According to them, they stress on monitoring and the prevention of such misuse since both recovery from damages and restoration of lost faith are difficult.

Hence, if the website of a brand is used for malevolent activities such as malware distribution or phishing and people get to know about it over the Net, then marketers owning that site could find it hard to restore end-users' confidence into visiting that site again.

Related article: Powerball Scammers Use Louisiana Lottery’s Name

» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2009