Beware of cybersquatters stealing online identities

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March 17th, 2009 - Posted by Robert Siciliano

Robert Siciliano is a NextAdvisor.com Expert Guest Blogger

As an individual or a business, you own your own name. It's your brand. And, as we know, identity theft is when someone else uses your name for ill-gotten gain. Well, what if they actually registered your name as a dot-com, or used a slight variation of your name on Facebook, alongside a profile picture of you?

Cybersquatting is the act of procuring someone else's trademarked brand name online as a dot-com or any other US-based extension.

Cybersquatters squat for many reasons including for fun, in the hopes of reselling the domain, using the domain to advertise competitors' wares, stalking, harassment or outright fraud.

Grabbing someone's given name is also a form of cybersquatting and is happening in social networks and on Twitter. Twitter is affected by Twittersquatting where various peoples' names as well as an estimated 100 top brands have been hijacked.

There are also several "Kevin Mitnicks" (hackers) on Facebook, which even prevented the actual Kevin Mitnick from accessing his own Facebook account. After Mitnick rightfully bitched about it and CNET made a call, Facebook listened and fixed the problem, stating, "We are very aggressive in fostering and enforcing our real name culture and sometimes we make mistakes. But it's rare, and it's been fixed."

Cybersquatting is also done maliciously for fraud purposes. Identity thieves will jack a domain similar to that of a bank and create a spoofed site, which they then use for phishing. Often, if the domain isn't available, they'll do the next best thing: typosquatting. Annualcreditreport.com was a victim of that. When the site launched, more than 200 similar domain names were snapped up.

This is just one more reason to protect yourself from identity theft.

Back in the day, I was once accused of cybersquatting! I wasn't, I swear! It was the early 90's, and I had an IBM PS1 Consultant 3.1 Microsoft operating system and a rockin' 150 MB hard drive. I bought myself some domains. I sold some, others I regrettably gave up. And there was one that will haunt me 'till the day I die.

I owned LEDZEPPELIN.com for about 5-6 years. Led Zeppelin was and is my band, and as a fan, I bought the domain as a keepsake. I would get emails from people all over the world, saying things like, "I am Paulo from Brazil, I love the Led Zep!"

Then when Clinton passed a law later making cybersquatting illegal, I knew it was only a matter of time. I had it for 5 years before anyone from the band's team of lawyers approached me about it. And when they did, I didn't know how to handle it. And my lawyer at the time, even less so. Ultimately, I gave it up without a fight, but I'm sure the band's lawyers billed them for the 1 inch thick book of a lawsuit I was served with. Sorry, dudes. My bad.

In this case, the lawyers saw an opportunity to build a case against me, a fan who would have been happy with a stupid guitar pick from Jimmy. Instead I sat in silence for a year while they built a huge case as to why they should own the domain. When served, I freaked out and called them, yelling that they could take it, that I never wanted that.

One of few regrets. But I have a nice 1 inch thick souvenir all about me and the band and why I'm an idiot.

Anyways, back to cybersquatting. A recent report from the New York Times sourced MarkMonitor, a domain name seller and company that protects brands names from misuse, and tracked an 18 percent rise in incidence of cybersquatting.

Which means that as a brand or individual, (or band, eesh) you should get your name on social networking sites or domain name immediately. Then, get your kids names as well.

Because one day they may be Zeppelin famous and have to fight a twit like me.

See Robert Siciliano, identity theft speaker, discussing DNS issues here.

Robert Siciliano is CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com , an identity theft expert, professional speaker, security analyst, published author and television news correspondent. Siciliano works with Fortune 1000 companies and startups as an advisor on product launches, branding, messaging, representation, SEO and media. Siciliano's thoughts and advice on all these matters appear often in both the televised and print news media including CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, Forbes and USA Today. He has 25 years of security training as a member of the American Society of Industrial Security. He is the author of 2 books, including The Safety Minute: Living on High Alert; How to take control of your personal security and prevent fraud. He's also partnered with Uni-Ball to help raise awareness about the growing threat of identity theft and to provide tips on how you can protect yourself.