Is your brand being abused?

Do you (really) know how your brand is being used on the internet, or did you lose track? For the past 10 years, hundreds of new TLDs (domain suffixes) have been introduced, making it more time-consuming and costly for companies to protect and control their brands online. It’s a jungle that can be difficult to navigate on your own as you try to put together a portfolio that ensures optimal protection and control. Unfortunately, the many new TLDs also benefit malicious cybercriminals.

Each time a third party registers a domain that contains your brand, you lose a bit of control. It is no longer up to you what your brand is being used for or associated with. We often see brands – both global and local – being used to generate traffic to pornographic websites and gambling sites or used in phishing attacks and other online scams.

It could potentially harm your company’s credibility if scammers use a domain that contains your brand to deceive your customers. For example, by sending fake invoices or fake bank details which customers are asked to use when paying their invoices.

Furthermore, it could become extremely expensive, if scam artists use a domain that contains your brand to set up fake webshops, where counterfeit products or competing brands are sold. Not having a proper overview can, thus, be a risky affair – but no need to worry. There is an easy solution.

Domain monitoring protects your brand from attacks by third parties
There are various ways to protect your brand from unauthorized and malicious third parties. The safest approach is, of course, to secure your brand on all existing TLDs, but this solution is very expensive and for most companies, it would mean securing a lot of defensive domain registrations on markets that are otherwise irrelevant and, thus, have no value for your business.

We recommend you only register domains that contain your brands on relevant markets, e.g. where you sell your products and services, so they add value – and instead subscribe to a monitoring solution that keeps an eye on the rest.
With a domain monitoring solution, you will be notified as soon as a third party registers a domain that contains your brand or a variation of your brand. This offers you an opportunity to take action in due time before any damage is done to your brand.

If you would like to hear more about how to protect your brand and save money on defensive registrations, fill out our contact form.

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