Cybersquatter Protection Guide
Have you protected your domain from cybersquatters?
The Threat
Cybersquatting represents a significant threat to web-based businesses. Anyone with a small amount of money can register a variation of your website name and set up shop in minutes — without ownership verification or trademark checks.
Even when a cybersquatter is breaking the law, pursuing legal action can be time-consuming and expensive. Remedies like arbitration and lawsuits can cost thousands and take many months or even years.
Five Common Cybersquatting Tactics
1. Competitive Threat
Competitors register domain variations to redirect your customer base to their own sites or products.
2. Adult Content Redirection
Malicious actors funnel traffic from misspelled URLs to inappropriate or pornographic sites, damaging your brand reputation.
3. Employee Retaliation
Disgruntled staff create sites using company name variations to expose internal information or damage the company's reputation.
4. Complaint Sites
Critics register domains like “[CompanyName]sucks.com” to post negative reviews and complaints about your business.
5. Extortion
Bad actors purchase domain variations of your brand and demand high prices to sell them back to you.
Protective Strategy
The best approach is to proactively register variations of your domain name before cybersquatters can claim them. Consider registering:
- Multiple domain extensions (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info)
- Hyphenated versions of your domain
- Singular and plural forms
- Common misspellings of your brand name
- Negative variations (e.g., “[yourcompany]sucks” domains)
Domain registration typically costs around $15 per name following industry deregulation, making proactive protection an affordable investment compared to the cost of legal action.
Check Your Domains
Use BetterWhois to look up variations of your domain and see if anyone has registered them. Catching cybersquatting early gives you the best chance of resolving it quickly.
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