09 March 2009

Buckle up - brand abuse on the rise

Brand abuse online is on the rise, according to a new report from specialist MarkMonitor.

The report has found the most popular form of online abuse to be cyber-squatting. This involves fraudsters registering a domain name that could potentially become popular with the intention of selling it for high profit later on.

Cyber-squatting rose by 18 per cent during 2008, topping off at about 1,722,133 reported incidents, according to the BBC.

The report warns brand owners and businesses to become more aggressive when it comes to people abusing a trademark, brand or domain name.

MarkMonitor also found that, of those businesses identified as "abusive" in 2007, 80 per cent were still in existence and operating today.

Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer for MarkMonitor, told the BBC: "That 80 per cent of sites identified in our study last year remain active today confirms that abuse is economically sustainable for fraudsters."

Other brand abuses cited in the report include phishing attacks and the practice of false association.

Phishing attacks are a technique used to steal private information including credit or bank card details. MarkMonitor released shocking numbers which showed that phishing on payment services rose by 122 per cent in the second half of 2008.

The research firm notes that phishing against financial services also rose by 51 per cent in the same time period. They attribute the rise in phishing attacks to the current economic recession.

False association, on the other hand, is when fraudsters buy domain names with similar wording to popular websites. From there they register and design the site to look similar to the original, in order to direct users to bogus or offensive websites.

A representative from anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab, Eddy Willems, said: "They [the fraudsters] know users will mistype. They look out for domains they can use to trick people."

He added: "The only thing you can do is be vigilant, and make sure you have security protection installed on your computer."

While attacks against auction and retail sites have declined, new victims of brand hijacking include social networking and online gaming sites.

Felman added that experts believe "brandjacking" will continue, saying: "We expect attacks to grow both internationally and in complexity, further increasing the threat to organisations' reputations and revenues."

The report noted that most instances of brandjacking took place in the United States, Germany and the UK

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