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Other Tactics

What is most important to understand about cybersquatting in today’s business world is that its practitioners are constantly developing their techniques and providing new challenges to brand owners. By aggregating domain names and turning the slightest of profits into a sustainable business, cybersquatters have made the monetization of domain names and cybersquatting permanent fixtures in the online industry.

Outside of the specific tactics discussed above, cybersquatters have become increasingly quick to develop and adapt their strategies to keep up with brand owners. Another harmful technique used by cybersquatters takes advantage of companies that are trying to promote their brands with generic domain names. When a brand has registered a useful generic, but failed to cover all domain names that users are likely to type in to reach the brand’s content, cybersquatters are quick to exploit this situation and seek to siphon this traffic.

Potential Harm

Outside of clear monetary harms caused to brand owners that must pay advertising fees to direct users to their appropriate Web sites, cybersquatting has led to several other types of harm. Many of these harms are intangible, leading to decreases in brand equity or consumer loyalty. Navigating to a cybersquatted page often leaves a user with a negative impression. Such an experience leads to an uncomfortable “hijacking” experience because users are taken to unexpected and possibly inappropriate content. This negative impression makes the user reluctant to visit such a site again, thus avoiding the originally targeted domain.²⁰ Because attracting Web traffic is vital to success in the online space, the loss of users due to negative impressions may bear significant consequences for a company. Additionally, the practice of diversion may remind users of a brand’s competitors, and serve as a force to drive customers to those competitors instead of the originally intended brand. More alarming than these effects are the distinctly criminal activities associated with cybersquatting. These practices include depositing spyware or malware, phishing attempts and the recently elevated issue of email interception. In the case of email interception, there is the possibility that the owner of the typo astrzeneca.com can intercept email sent to anyone@astrazeneca.com when they accidentally type @astrzeneca.com instead of @astrazeneca.com.

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