Domain Brand Protection Services: Why They Are Important

Summary

• Crucial Online Presence: Businesses must establish strong online presence, facing increasing risks from unauthorized name and trademark use.
• Wiser Market’s Solutions: Wiser Market offers comprehensive domain brand protection services to combat threats and drive growth.
• Key Threats Explored: Cybersquatting, typosquatting, brand impersonation, trademark infringement, and counterfeiting pose risks to brand domains.
• Services Provided: Domain acquisition, monitoring, legal enforcement, and reputation management safeguard brands from online threats.
• Benefits of Protection: Domain brand protection preserves intellectual property, mitigates financial losses, builds trust, and manages reputation.

Establishing a strong online presence is crucial for businesses across all industries. As brands increasingly rely on online channels, the risks associated with the unauthorized use of their name and trademarks grow, and domain brand protection becomes essential. However, effective protection can no longer be carried out manually, and companies require technology and expertise to help them protect their domains at scale. 

Wiser Market’s solutions give brands a complete suite of domain brand protection services that combat threats and drive growth. 

According to a study by the European Commission, Domain Name System (DNS) Abuse has been a serious issue for years. Another study recorded a significant increase in cybersquatting cases and various methods used to deceive users.

Here, we explore domain brand protection, what brand protection services include, and their importance in safeguarding businesses against online threats, such as cybersquatting, trademark infringement, and brand dilution.

 

What is Domain Brand Protection

Domain brand protection refers to strategies and services designed to safeguard assets like domain names and trademarks.

Domain brand protection services include proactive measures to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property assets and secure brand growth and reputation.

The most common brand infringements addressed by domain brand protection services include types of domain name abuse, such as cybersquatting and typosquatting, and domain-related intellectual property abuse, like brand impersonation, trademark infringement, and counterfeiting.

 

Threats to Brand Domains

To better understand the value of domain online protection, let’s review the key threats to brands:

Cybersquatting

Also known as domain squatting, it is in fact a type of impersonation in that it involves a third-party registration or use, in bad faith, of domain names that closely resemble another company’s brand name, trademark, or distinctive mark.

It’s crucial that brands devise a strategy for coping with cybersquatting, starting with purchasing variations of their domain name and TLDs. For example, the Wiser company owns wiser.com and may decide it is beneficial to also get wiser.net or wiser-us.com to prevent cybersquatting.

Typosquatting

Typosquatting refers to a malicious third-party purchasing domain names that are one typo away from a genuine brand name. For instance, “amaz0n.com” instead of “amazon.com”.

When customers make an innocent mistake, they reach a lookalike website, username, account, or app complete with the original brand name, logo, branding, and email addresses. Thinking that they are engaging with an authentic brand, users may unknowingly purchase counterfeit products and disclose sensitive financial information.

Brand Impersonation

Online brand impersonation occurs when an unauthorized third party misleads consumers to believe it is a legitimate brand. In order to impersonate a brand, malicious actors create replicas such as lookalike websites, fraudulent social media accounts, and app impersonation. Impersonation has become more common as technology makes it so much easier to accomplish.

When scammers impersonate a brand with a fake website or email domain used to deceive users into thinking they are interacting with a legitimate brand, they attack both consumers and brands with malicious intent.

This attack, called Domain Phishing, is about financial gain. Cybercriminals impersonate a brand to trick users into entering a fake domain. Once they divert traffic from the original brand, these bad actors can create fake product pages and sell counterfeit or gray-market goods to unsuspecting consumers. Sometimes they offer goods for sale and collect payments but never send the purchased items. But that’s not all. Scammers also make money by tricking customers into sharing sensitive data, such as credit card information, which they can exploit.

Trademark Infringement

Trademarks protect the unique identity of a business. They are the best way to create recognition and enable customers to identify the source of the goods or services. Therefore, when an unauthorized third party exploits your trademark in its domain name, website, listing, or any other way, it constitutes trademark infringement.

A form of trademark infringement, trademark squatting occurs when someone other than the original brand owner obtains a trademark relating to the brand to make a profit, such as by creating an impersonating domain with the related trademark to take advantage of the brand’s name and reputation.

Counterfeiting

A form of trademark infringement, counterfeits are imitations of the authentic product. Digital channels offer a dizzying array of counterfeit products, from pharmaceuticals and pesticides to food, toys, automotive parts, and sneakers.

Illegal domains often offer fakes that confuse and mislead consumers. In other cases, they cater to customers that look to buy a lookalike for cheaper, making them easier to find by exploiting the domain name system.

Risks of Ignoring Domain Brand Protection

Failing to prioritize domain brand protection can expose businesses to risks. Cybersquatting, for example, can divert traffic to unauthorized websites, resulting in lost sales. When customers end up with fake products, often of subpar quality and no customer service, it damages consumer trust, brand loyalty, and reputation.

Don’t let others free-ride on your brand name and success.

 

Domain Brand Protection Services

1. Domain Acquisition and Management: To mitigate the risk of cybersquatting, domain brand protection services help businesses acquire relevant domain names before malicious actors get a chance to do so. They can also manage domains and ensure maintenance and renewal.

2. Monitoring and Detection: Brand protection services employ advanced technology with monitoring tools to constantly scan online for instances of brand infringement. Technology can track domain registrations, marketplaces, social media platforms, and other online channels for any unauthorized use of brand names and/or trademarks and copyrights.

3. Enforcement and Legal: Domain brand protection services play a crucial role in enforcing intellectual property rights. They identify and initiate takedown actions, file complaints, and have the expertise to work with legal professionals to achieve time and cost-effective results.

4. Brand Reputation Management: Reputation is hard to build and easy to tarnish. Domain brand protection services aid in preserving and enhancing brand reputation. By tracking online mentions of the brand and addressing issues like brand impersonation, they help to protect brand image and maintain consumer trust while deterring scammers from targeting the brand.

 

Benefits of Domain Brand Protection

Here are some of the main benefits of domain brand protection services:

1. Protecting intellectual property by actively monitoring and enforcing intellectual property rights like trademarks and copyrights.
2. Mitigating financial losses by minimizing revenue loss through preventing rampant counterfeiting, unauthorized use of trademarks, and brand dilution.
3. Building customer trust by maintaining an online presence free from brand impersonation and counterfeit goods.
4. Managing reputation by addressing negative incidents that could damage the brand’s image and securing its intellectual property rights.

 

Wiser Brand Protection Services

In an interconnected digital landscape, domain brand protection services are essential for businesses looking to safeguard their brand names, trademarks, listings, and other online assets. Yet the benefits of domain brand protection services extend beyond domain protection to encompass financial results, customer trust, and brand reputation.

By proactively acquiring, managing, and monitoring domain names and enforcing intellectual property rights online, brand protection services like Wiser Market play a vital role in protecting businesses in the digital world. As Wiser Market counters online threats and protects your intellectual property assets, it helps to secure your online presence, maintain a competitive edge and ensure long-term success in today’s dynamic business landscape.

Wiser Market’s superb brand protection services, from detection and analysis to takedown actions, result in over a 90% success rate.

 

FAQ

What is Domain Name?

When we talk about the Internet, a domain name refers to the combination of characters used to identify the location of a website. Practically, domain names are what we type to search for a website.

Every domain name is unique, making it possible for a device to locate and open a web page online through a web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

An example is the URL https://wisermarket.com used for the Wiser Market website.

 

What is Domain Name System Abuse?

Domain Name System (DNS) abuse refers to any activity that uses domain names or the DNS protocol to carry out malicious or illegal activity.

 

What is a TLD?

A top-level domain is the domain suffix. For example, when visiting wisermarket.com, “.com” is Wiser Market’s TLD. Some of the original TLDs include .com, .gov, .org, .net, and .edu.

Scammers who register a brand’s name with a different TLD engage in domain name abuse. Domain brand protection services help stop them.

 

What are the most common typos for typosquatting?

1. Misspelling of the business name (for instance, Yves Saint Lauren instead of Saint Laurent).
2. Domain name typos, such as replacing, adding, or omitting a character (typing yuutube.com instead of youtube.com).
3. TLD typos that typosquatters register because they are confusing (such as .cm, the country code TLD for Cameroon, instead of .com).

 

How to Report Website Impersonation?

If you find that an unauthorized party impersonates your domain, you should be proactive and work to eliminate it:

1. Record information about the impersonating domain: name, date, and time.
2. Take screenshots you can use as evidence later.
3. Gather all evidence, such as communication with the impersonating domain.
4. Contact the party authorized to act, such as the registrar or registry operator, internet service provider (ISP), the website owner, or the appropriate law enforcement agency.
5. Follow up and stay proactive until the issue is resolved.

 

What is Online Brand Protection?

Digital brand protection services counter online threats and protect your intellectual property assets. Online brand protection safeguards your brand revenue, profitability, reputation, customer service, and brand trust.

 

What are online brand protection services?

Online brand protection combats brand infringements. The services include search, analysis, and enforcement of the intellectual property rights of businesses of all sizes.

Whether you wish to protect your domain name, fight counterfeiting, prevent brand infringements, or combat gray market selling and knockoffs, try Wiser Market’s online brand protection services.