What if someone else is squatting on my domain name?
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Doing business on the internet is not without safety issues. Today, illegal activities over the World Wide Web are becoming prevalent. Today there are highly skilled people who are good at committing crimes in the internet. These cybercriminals usually form networks or groups. So while there are individual criminals there are also networks of criminals. They steal information, people’s identities, hack into accounts or infect a particular site with malware. They take advantage of the internet as such would protect them from revealing their identity. It is hard to crack them down because anyone on the internet can do anything anonymously which is why the proliferation of crimes is increasing day by day. There are already many new forms of cybercrimes today.
Cybercrimes has become a business. Underground cybercriminals can buy and sell stolen information and identities. They target large organizations of institutions that store information about people. Online business sites are also vulnerable to attacks. They are not excluded from becoming victims of schemes in the internet.
What is domain squatting or cybersquattiing?
Cyberquatting in simple terms is the action of using the domain name of particular company illegally. Domain names are acquired and owned by person be it business owners or bloggers, etc through registering to a hosting site. When they have bought it they have acquired along with it the right to exclusively own that domain name.
Nowadays, this is a common problem. Cybersquatting has become a big problem especially for business that has a large web presence. For many business owners it has taken toll on them. It has become an issue because it affected their entire issue. You have started the business but all of the sudden you will find out that all your effort and investment is taken away from you. At the start you will buy your own domain name. You will pay for it. You will develop your website and all the stuff in it. You invested so much on SEO optimization to generate visibility, you have poured in chunk of your resources updating all the applications found in your site and pretty soon you will find that someone is squatting on your domain name.
Domain squatters don’t really care about who owns the domain or what company they victimized through this scheme. They don’t care about you as long as they take advantage of your site. Sites with a high-grade of SEO and has a lot of customers usually fall prey on domain squatting.
What is the implication of legal squatting on you?
Cybersquatting has an implication on you as the original owner of the website address. it is not simply that you become a victim. You should not only care about protecting yourself from this scheme but also you should think of other people whose safety might be at stake. Of course, you don’t have control over domain squatters. Everything they want to do with your domain name they are free to do and the problem is that since you are the original owner, wherever their illegal actions take your domain name, it will make you suffer the consequences. Here are the implications of domain name squatting on you:
- Squatters create domain name similar to that of your own. They can create name out of any imaginable misspelling or mistakes of your domain name.
- Squatters of your domain name may divert your customers to gambling or pornographic sites. This means that there is a danger that your customers will leave you behind and find your site scammy. These customers might report your site.
- It is possible that hundreds of same domain names are registered by squatters. It may lead you to be competing with your own domain name which would eventually affect the generation of customers for your site.
- These cybersquatter sites might redirect your potential customers to your competitors.
How to protect your website from domain squatting?
- Register more domains. This provides little room for squatters to create another domain name out of imaginable misspellings from your original domain. Register any common misspelling so that you exclusively own them.
Register your business trademark.
- Closely monitor the traffics that you are receiving. This allows you to identify the trend of subscription of potential customers to your site.
Monitor your domain.
Why is it important to look out for cybersquatting?
This happened to many businesses and it might happen to you. You have built your traffic through time and then you will just find out that someone is taking advantage the fruit of your time and effort. Your website is very important to your business and you don’t want to find yourself in a situation wherein your company is being compromised because of illegal use by someone else.