Reducing Cybersquatting,
Phishing
Alex
Tajirian
September 26, 2009
Solutions to cybersquatting and phishing
must target brand customers instead of the trademark
infringers, who are in effect liars. This post outlines
why online-based traditional solutions fail, and it
offers solutions to two types of lying (cybersquatting
and phishing).
There's no point to trying to reduce
phishing by reducing its profits. Nobody knows how much
money can be made by phishing, and this includes would-be
phishers; an economic-incentives solution can't work
if the solution's target has no idea what his or her
profits are. Meanwhile, the would-be culprits do know
they face entry barriers that are negligible at best.
Why not give the scam a try and see what happens?
Trying to blacklist phishing sites
doesn't work either, judging by the research of Tyler
Moore and Richard Clayton at Cambridge University. The
problem, they argue, is that liars can manipulate crowdsourcing-based
solutions (see Evaluating
the Wisdom of Crowds in Assessing Phishing Websites).
A third anti-phishing tactic, that
of shutting down the sites, can be countered by strategies
found in a paper done by Moore (see Phishing
and the Economics of E-crime). But site takedowns
do get results when fighting cybersquatters, since traffic
to the liar's site is through direct navigation (which
can be taken down) or search engines (which take a long
time to index under different domain names).
The remaining solutions, suing the
violators or buying up their sites, often do more harm
than good. (See "Domain
Name Lessons from Napster” and "Don't
Litigate, Mitigate!”).
Brand owners can get better results
with solutions that target brand users:
- Increase customer recognition of fake Web sites
by increasing the customization of genuine sites. Display visitor-relevant
information (date of last visit, name, IP, etc.) or go further
and customize the site's "look and feel" and content based
on the visitor's preferences. Of course, such solutions may
require new cookie technologies that are harder to reverse-engineer,
and they require an investment by the brand owner (and thereby
act as barriers to entry). It should be noted that content customization
is itself value-adding to the site's owner.
- Post a public list of legitimate sites. Customers
can find more online information about a company than companies
realize. Why not make it even easier for them while adding value
to their experience.
- Educate customers about potential fraud. This
solution is becoming more important with "vishing," which uses
VOIP to target customers through automatic dialing. An automated
message informs the customer that his credit card has had suspicious
activity and that he should call the recorded phone number immediately.
Another new technique is the bogus
live chats. Education should also make "money
mules” (i.e., money transfer agents) more aware of possible
scams and thus make money laundering more difficult.
- Increase the risk of buying counterfeit. Brand
owners can create their own fake sites and post warnings there
that the requested merchandise is a knockoff. If the customer
goes through with the check out, the site sends a warning e-mail.
Fake sites are traps to catch criminals after they enter their
personal information, and thus deter online shoppers from buying
counterfeit products as the risk of being caught increases. Moreover,
being aware of lower profits deters entry of criminals. The solution
does not alienate legitimate brand buyers—who should realize
that if a Web site's deal is too good to be true, then it is too
good to be true—and it can protect the value of genuine
merchandise from dilution. In short, if you cannot beat cybersquatters,
join them.
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