Corporate Brand Abuse
Your brands are the heart of your business. Abuse of your logos, trademarks and copyrights can undermine your company’s business model. Brand abuse may take many forms:
- Domain name abuse – domain registrations that include trademarked items and misspellings of brands to confuse customers, extort money from the trademark holder or for use in a phishing attack (called cybersquatting)
- Unauthorized affiliations – business or individuals using known brands and logos (on Web sites or within spam email) to establish consumer trust and convey a partnership, affiliation or other endorsement.
- Search engine “gaming” – unauthorized use of intellectual property to manipulate search engine rankings and divert online traffic.
- Paid placement advertising abuse – competitors or predators bidding on trademarks in the pay-per-click advertising systems used by all major search engines in order to divert customers.
- Association with objectionable or inappropriate content – unauthorized use of brands, trademarks and logos on Web sites that contain pornographic, violent and other unsavory content.
- Phishing and online fraud schemes – the explicit and unauthorized use of a corporate identity to legitimize social engineering schemes.
Left unmanaged, brand abuse can negatively impact customer perceptions and influence purchase decisions.
Learn About Cyveillance Brand Protection Solutions:
- Enterprise Solutions: Brand Protection