October 12, 2005
Cybersquatting Slime Bags: Amazon Fights Back and My Tips To Prevent
An entire industry of Cybersquatters exists today. These slime bags are too lazy to build their own sites, are legally, morally, and ethically challenged. Rather, they choose to leach off registered Trademarks with their pervasive "typo" domains and often use redirects to their own low life sites. Many of these sites also use Affiliate Programs to earn money so these myopic Networks who are only interested in a quick buck effectively become "enablers" with these cyber thieves. In this installment I present a real world case and tips to prevent this action.
Amazon defeats them. A case study.
Every day, millions of unique visitors are generated by surfers who misstype a domain name in their browser and land up on a Cybersquatters site. The recent Amazon story for your reading pleasure:
Cybersquatters, typo-squatters, and parties who have tacked keywords onto trademark-protected domain names were hit hard this week in two separate rulings by the National Arbitration Forum.
Amazon.com took action against two individuals who had registered domain names it claimed violated its registered trademark. Arbitration was carried out under ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
One of the individuals, Michele Dinoila of SZK.com, maintained 12 domains that the online retailer claimed bore a "confusing similarity" to Amazon.com. The dozen domains included keyword meshing URLs such as "amazonappliances.com," typos like "wwwamazon.com," and a foreign translation of "amazzone.com." The sites in question contained links to Amazon's competitors, including BarnesandNoble.com and Booksamillion.com.
Dinoila, based in Italy, is named in more than 20 other decisions and has been called a "recidivist cybersquatter" by Amazon.com.
Amazon won. The slime bags lost. Source: http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3554411
Tips for Site Owners
1) Contrary to popular opinion, the very first thing you should do is register every possible "typo" and keyword leaching domain name. Start with your real domain name and register .com, .net, .org and then continue down the list with typos and keyword leaching. Set up these additional domains to redirect to your primary/real domain. Don't forget the loosers who will register the "-" (hyphen) incarnation of your fooproduct.com domain name like this: foo-product.com. If you find one already registered and you don't hold a Trademark on it, watch the expire date and try and register it as soon as it expires. At one time, I had over 15 domain names registered to prevent the leaches from using them. This even included a branded service on my site which I may wish to spin off into it's own site.
2) Register your domain name as a Trademark via the United States Trademark Electronic Search System (Tess) site. Consult with your attorney if you are not comfortable doing this yourself.
3) BEFORE you register a domain name, do some research via the United States Trademark Electronic Search System (Tess) site. Use the search feature to determine if the "mark" is already registered. Don't leach via registering a domain name like "keywordamazon.com" and or anything even remotely related to the registered mark. Many mark holders actively spider the net for infractions and for the most part they are prepared to play very serious hard ball as the above Amazon case illustrates. If you find a "gray area" in your search before registration, send a very polite and civil email and fax to the mark holder and ask them for permission to register the domain. Wait for an answer before you register. Save your correspondence. For example, Microsoft owns the mark for "Windows" but is perfectly happy to see other domain names registered which use this mark in the name like "windowstips" or "windowsbbs". You should still contact them to cover your bases.
4) Honest mistakes can happen to a Webmaster. If you receive a legal notice that your domain name infringes on an existing mark which was registered before your domain name, surrender it at once. Use the examples above in the Amazon case to guide you. Don't play games, don't listen to 13 year old kids on Forums, just play nice and surrender it for the cost of the registration and ONLY this amount.
5) I certainly don't feel your pain. All to common is the following plea: "but dude, I have spent the last 2 years building up my site. It makes a ton of money. I'm only 18 years of age and never knew anything about marks. This is really going to hurt me dude." Sorry Charlie, I have absolutely no sympathy for you. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Surrender your leaching domain at once or expect to find yourself in serious legal trouble. Learn from your mistake and don't do it again. Tell others about your mistake and encourage them to play nice and respect laws.
Tips for Affiliate Networks
Your not fooling anyone with your active participation in this deplorable leaching mess. Many of you permit the leachers and slime bags to join your network and earn money from sites which clearly infringe on marks and or cause confusion in the marketplace. STOP this practice at once! Just how much time does it take to search for a mark? Have you been living under a rock? When you see an affiliates domain name like "mickeymouse(insert whatever you wish) .com just reject it. Refuse to do business with these Cybersquatting leaches and the incidence of this abuse would immediately drop to a near zero level. Use your TOS and email to educate your affiliates about this issue and tell them you won't tolerate or accept their leach sites. If you find one, they forfit all income earned.
Additional Resources:
WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center
Returns ownership of domains to the rightful owner which have been stolen or registered with the intent to "leach" via a typo or Trademark violation. Much faster than legal action.
The National Arbitration Forum
High litigation costs and the time-consuming nature of lawsuits can be a deterrent to anyone needing to solve a legal problem. That's why from large complex cases to smaller commercial and individual claims, parties trust the resolution experts at the National Arbitration Forum.
Posted by Steve_S
October 10, 2005
Santa Claus Has A Gun: Year End Abuse Warnings
Abuse on the Internet and in the brick-and-mortar world always increases during the holidays. Although we have previously covered Spam, charity fraud, Phishing, Identity Theft, and other slimy procedures, we feel obligated to cover some of these issues again and include a few additional tips.
Identity Theft Warnings For The Holidays
Tips for the brick-and-mortar-world: Don't flash/display those large stacks of $100 dollar bills in the mall. Criminals are watching and carrying that kind of cash makes you a target. Ladies should wrap their purse around their neck and place it in front of them. Guys should insure that your wallet is in your front pocket where a pick pocket criminal will have a harder time. If your traveling to a foreign land, a money belt which is strapped to your body and under your clothes is a valuable measure of protection. If you are taking your car into your local dealer/garage for service, insure that you remove sensitive documents and valuables. Don't store holiday packages inside your car where a criminal can see them. Place them in your trunk.
Tips for the Internet: Don't shop at unfamiliar stores until you obtain references from your friends. All stores should use a secure page/padlock (https) when they ask for your data. If they don't, leave and never return. If you venture into ebay, please be very careful. Check the feedback on a seller, don't purchase from folks that lack adequate feedback, and if a sellers only means of paying is via Western Union, don't purchase or bid. Try a test email to the seller with questions before you purchase to measure their response time and the ability to answer questions. Use PayPal to pay, since it offers an additional measure of protection and bans a number of countries where crime is rampant.
Hurricane Fraud
These low life slime bags belong in federal prison for decades. U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales created the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force shortly after the storm hit to deter, investigate and prosecute disaster-related federal crimes such as charity fraud, identity theft and insurance fraud.
The brief story of a slime bag: "The Department of Justice (DoJ) indicted a Florida man late Monday afternoon for running an alleged Internet scam seeking to profit from Hurricane Katrina. Gary S. Kraser of Aventura, Fla., is charged with four counts of wire fraud for soliciting charitable donations supposedly intended for the humanitarian relief of Hurricane Katrina victims. According to the DoJ, Kraser falsely claimed that he was piloting flights to Louisiana to provide medical supplies to the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and to evacuate children and others in critical medical condition. Kraser further claimed that he had organized a group of Florida pilots to assist him in his supposed relief efforts. In all, the DoJ claims Kraser raised more than $40,000 through his Web site, AirKatrina.com."
Source: http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3553516
The DoJ warning page is located here and includes phone numbers. File your complaints on this site.
Email and the Holidays
Email traffic on the net always spikes during the holidays. Be very cautious about any "postcard/holiday card" sent to you via email. Insure that your machine is properly configured with a farewell, anti-virus software, and anti-spyware software. Don't forget to keep your updates and profiles current and run the Windows Update on a regular basis. Don't open attachments and ignore all attempts to entice you into clicking a link to update your PayPal profile and many others. Launch your browser and then type in the URL, as opposed to clicking a link inside a slimy email.
Posted by Steve_S