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Protect
your Web Site from Cybersquatters
Business is stolen from
successful web sites everyday. Did
you know that anyone with $35 can register a variation of your
web site name and set up shop in about five minutes? No ownership
checks or trademark searches are done at the time of registration.
Since most registration services are automated, even the most
obviously malicious names are approved with a click of the mouse.
Cybersquatting,
the act of registering a name in bad faith, has become one
of the major problems facing businesses on the Internet. Although
the term Cybersquatting was originally used to describe the act
of registering another's trademarked name, the term is commonly
used to describe many different forms of bad faith registrations.
In order to protect yourself, you should be aware of the following forms of
cybersquatting and domain misappropriation.
1. 'The Sneaky Competitor': One of your competitors sets up a web site using
a variation of your domain name in order to lure your customers
away.
2. 'The Porn Funnel': A variation of your
domain name is used to 'funnel' traffic into a pornographic web
site.
3. 'The Employee Hate
Site': A disgruntled past (or present)
employee reserves a variation of your company name to post company
secrets or gripes.
4. 'The 'Sucks' Site': Similar to #3, an unhappy customer reserves YourCompanySucks.com
in order to post complaints about your business.
5. 'The Ransom Artist': Someone reserves your company name before you
can and then attempts to sell it back to you for an outrageous
amount
Can this really happen? Is this legal?
Yes, it can and does happen everyday. Is
it legal? Depending on the situation, site owners may have legal
recourse (e.g. trademark infringement lawsuits or arbitration).
However, even when a cybersquatter is breaking the law, it can
be time-consuming and expensive for a site owner to win a legal
judgment, especially if the cybersquatter is located in a different
country.
The easiest (and cheapest) way to prevent
most cybersquatting is to register a few basic variations of
your company name before the damage is done.
Which names should I register?
1. COM/NET/ORG: Hopefully, you have already registered the .COM
version of your company name. To be safe, register the .NET and
.ORG variations as well.
2. Hyphenation: If your company name has more than one word in
it, register it both with and without a dash. (e.g. usair.com
and us-air.com)
3. Singular/Plural: If your name lends itself to it, register its
singular and plural versions. (e.g. fordtruck.com and
fordtrucks.com)
4. Common Misspellings: If your name can be easily misspelled, register
common misspellings (e.g. volkswagon.com and volkswagen.com)
5. And finally, the
juvenile sounding but damaging 'sucks' variation: Many experienced internet users routinely type
in the 'sucks' variation of a company name on their browser to
find complaints about a company. Most savvy companies now make
it standard procedure to register this name before a vindictive
person does. (e.g. verizonsucks.com)
Isn't this going to get expensive?
Registering 'protective' domain names is
now becoming a necessary and expected cost for doing business
on the Internet. Luckily the domain registration industry has
been recently de-regulated. Domains which have traditionally
cost $70 to register can now be registered for as low as $15.
A small price to pay to help protect against the time and expense
involved pursuing a cybersquatter.
Extra Benefit: These names can bring additional customers to your
site. One year of free web redirection
is included with each domain registration. You can use this to
point your additional names to your existing web
site. This allows potential customers who mispell or mistype
your domain name to be automatically directed to your web site.
In many cases, this additional site traffic more than covers
the domain registration fees.
Use the following form to search for
and reserve your domain names. We
have designed the process to be very quick and user friendly.
No technical information is required and there is no need to
login or create a membership account.
By taking just a few minutes now, you
can help prevent costly and potentially embarrassing cybersquatting
incidents from occurring...
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New Domain Special: Domains as low as $15. Receive a 50% discount
when buying more than one domain name at a time. After the first
domain, all domains in your order are only $15/yr. As always,
this includes free domain parking, a free temporary page and
one year of free web forwarding. |
If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail
us. We would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
If you would like to learn more about our features and services, please
visit our main web page.
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