Protect Your Brand Investment with. Brand Monitoring. from DomainTools DOMAINTOOLS SOLUTION BRIEF

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1 1 Protect Your Brand Investment with Brand Monitoring from DomainTools DOMAINTOOLS SOLUTION BRIEF

2 2 INTRODUCTION: A BRAVE NEW BRANDED WORLD Apple, Coca- Cola, Louis Vuitton. According to a recent report issued by Interbrand, the value of these three brands alone exceeds US $200 billion. These and other well- recognied Fortune 500 companies have invested heavily in building their brands and invest heavily in protecting them. Brands both large and small face a new world of threats and risks as intellectual property becomes more vulnerable in the expansive digital landscape. Brands are under constant siege as cybercriminals and other bad actors apply a host of new Internet- based technologies for misbegotten profit while degrading the integrity and value of an established brand. Brand Abuse is a broad umbrella term used to encompass a wide range of offenses that cost brands hundreds of billions in losses every year. Some of the most common techniques include cybersquatting, the illegal sale of counterfeit branded goods, spearphishing, and domain hijacking. However, with the right investigative and monitoring tools in place, organiations can proactively protect themselves against the loss of revenue, maintain the trust of their customers, and preserve the most valuable jewel in their IP crown: their brand.

3 3 THE FATAL FOUR: THE MOST COMMON BRAND ABUSE TECHNIQUES As technology evolves, so do the tactics that cybercriminals rely on to identify and exploit potential vulnerabilities. For brands, the challenge just grows in complexity, as they have to divert more resources to identifying and chasing down bad actors. What follows are four of the most common Brand Abuse techniques that brand guardians should be well acquainted with in order to adequately safeguard their brand investment over the long- term: 1 CYBERSQUATTING Cybersquatting takes two primary forms: 1. Direct Typos: Direct typos refer to the registration of deliberately misspelled domain names of recognied brands by a domain squatter (i.e., Amaan.com ). If a misspelled domain is typed into a browser, it will often be redirected to competitive ads or a for- profit survey site, even going so far as to include branding and logo elements from Amaon.com onto the page to lend legitimacy. Of course, anyone directed to such a site is really trying to find Amaon.com, and yet they will end up with a horrible user experience that reflects poorly on the Amaon brand to say nothing of the fact that their customer did not find their site and transact their business as they were initially planning. 2. Criticism Sites: such as amaonsucks.com. These sites are often registered by unhappy customers or competitive companies and used as bulletin boards for anonymous attacks on a company s brand. 2 COUNTERFEITING Counterfeiting is an extension of cybersquatting. Using typo domains or domains related to a target brand, a fraudulent individual or organiation will attempt to sell knock- off goods, betting on user trust and brand equity to overcome any suspicion that the site doesn t look quite like what they are used to. 3 PHISHING Phishing is high- volume spam specifically targeted at a brand s customer base. Using cybersquatted domains, phishers will attempt to get customers to enter their account information in order to harvest the credit card numbers, social security numbers and other valuable data that is within the user s account at that brand/website. Spear Phishing is a particularly nefarious form of phishing in which an attacker will send an from a legitimate looking corporate domain to a large number of company employees, asking them to enter their login and password or execute some other action that gives the attacker access to data and systems on which to steal or inflict damage. While this is more akin to a cybersecurity issue, it starts with brand abuse at the domain level. 4 DOMAIN HIJACKING In limited, more dangerous cases, cyberattackers will try and steal your domain name from your registrar, or at a minimum hack into your account and change the name servers, DNS data or Whois data. This is exactly what happened to Twitter.com and NewYorkTimes.com when they were attacked by the Syrian Electronic Army in late August Protection against this form of cyberattack begins at the Registrar and Registry level.

4 4 A PROACTIVE APPROACH TO SAFEGUARDING YOUR BRAND: THE BRAND PROTECTION VALUE CHAIN There is no silver bullet for brand protection. Instead, the companies that have addressed this issue most effectively employ a value chain of processes to ensure their brand is being protected in a highly proactive and holistic manner. The Brand Protection Value Chain can be delineated in three discrete areas: 1 DISCOVER A. Typo Generator: In football they say the best offense starts with a good defense. In the realm of brand protection, that means that companies should be defensively registering their own typo domains. Some organiations bristle at having to pay to register domains that they will never use. However, it is much better to own your own typo domains than someone else. At an average of $15 a year per domain, it is a relatively cheap insurance policy. DomainTools offers a free typo generator tool available on our site. Use it to show common typos of your brand(s) that are currently unregistered. We recommend using this tool before launching a new brand, so you can get as many of the most common typos as possible. B. Brand Search: Find registered domains, worldwide, that contain your brand. This powerful tool allows you to find nearly all of the currently or historically registered domains that use your brand as part of their domain. Use the Advanced Search functionality to limit to certain TLDs, to reduce false positives by using AND/NOT functionality, and to anchor the brand string to a certain area within the domain name. C. Screenshots: In the event your company is the victim of brand abuse, it will be very useful to have screenshots of the offending domain names. Screenshots will also serve as an important piece of evidentiary support if legal action is required or as a vehicle for forcing parties to relinquish control of infringing domains. DomainTools screenshots.com site as well as the Screenshot History tool on our core DomainTools.com site both make available the homepage screenshot of domains and websites. 2 IDENTIFY A. Whois and Whois History: Use these flagship tools to look up the ownership records of brand- infringing domain names. Our market- leading Whois data will help identify the person or organiation that is attempting to steal your brand equity for their benefit. In cases of Whois Privacy, use our 10 years of Whois History data to find records prior to the advent of the privacy service. B. Reverse IP and Revers NS: Once you find an offending domain name, it is useful to look at other domains hosted at the same resource. DomainTools patented ReverseIP technology, along with our recently released Reverse Name

5 5 Server lookup, allow you to find all the other domains hosted on a given IP address, or pointed to a given name server. Expanding an investigation of brand abuse is critical in order to bring a burden of proof that is both ironclad and commensurate with high financial penalties for the defendant. C. Reverse Whois: Reverse Whois is a powerful identification service that allows you to search the entire inventory of DomainTools Whois records to find other domains owned by the same offending registrant. You can search currently registered domains AND historically registered domains. Search on name, address, organiation name, or any other string in the Whois record. In many cases, simply starting with a single Whois record can yield thousands of typo domains owned by the same registrant. A cybersquatting case involving thousands or tens of thousands of domains has a much greater impact than those taking one domain at a time. As a plaintiff, you can reclaim thousands of brand typo domains at once. Reverse Whois can be used to run one- off reports, or upgrade to DomainTools Interactive Research Mode (IRM) to get unfettered access and advanced search capabilities to this incredibly powerful research tool. 3 MONITOR A. Brand Monitor: DomainTools will proactively monitor all newly registered domains every day, and notify you if we see one that includes your defined brand string(s). This represents a simple, low- cost way to stay ahead of abusive domain activity. Knowledge is power, and this information will enable you to subvert fraudulent cybersquatters. Bad actors are often lay, and will take the paths of least resistance. By demonstrating that you are paying attention, you can likely drive perpetrators to focus on someone else s brand instead. B. Domain Monitor: Available today with basic notification functionality, this popular tool is being completely redesigned and rebuilt in 2014 to address the increasing demands of our clients. Domain Monitor alerts you anytime anything changes with your registry whois data. It s a simple and unobtrusive way to create an extra layer of security against domain hijacking or accidental domain expiration. C. Name Server and IP Monitors: Use DomainTools new name server and IP Monitors to get alerted when domains get pointed to specific internet resources. If your research uncovers certain domain name servers, or IP ranges that are hosting nefarious sites, you ll want to be proactive in learning of any activity on those resources. Our daily monitoring tools will help you keep an eye on the bad guys. D. Registrant Monitor: Brand abusers are often repeat offenders. Use DomainTools Registrant Monitor to keep an eye on these individuals or organiations. Once you collect an identifying name or or alias or unique label within an offending whois record, use Registrant Monitor to watch for any new domain registrations that are associated with these identifiers. You ll be notified of all future domain activity by these individuals or organiations, providing additional evidence for your brand protection efforts.

6 6 CONCLUSION: The battle to protect your brand and IP online is only going to grow more complex. The front lines of this battle are at the domain name and DNS level. While the required attention here is minimal compared to other fronts in the war, the cost of inattention is potentially enormous, leading to reputation damage, brand confusion, and revenue loss. Take advantage of the free or relatively inexpensive self- service tools out there and become the first to act and the first to know about potential new liabilities. A good intelligence officer can be more valuable than, and possibly remove the need for, a platoon of heavier artillery down the road. ABOUT DOMAINTOOLS: DomainTools offers the most comprehensive searchable database of domain name registration and hosting data geared to monitor, protect and investigate online fraud, cyber crimes and brand fraud. Users of DomainTools.com can review over 470 million historical domain name and Whois records, over 3 billion DNS data points (IP addresses, name servers, mail servers, hosting history), and 6 years of Screenshot history. The Company s comprehensive snapshots of past and present domain name registration, ownership and usage data, in addition to powerful research and monitoring resources, help customers by unlocking everything there is to know about a domain name. Visit the website at