Joining forces to squash cybersquatters

Just this morning my aunt was talking about how smart it would have been to buy a bunch of generic domain URL names when the Internet was just starting out—and then sell the domains to big companies for a lot of profit. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with the idea. It's called cybersquatting; and for big name companies, it's grown from nuisance to threat.

In an attempt to counteract cybersquatters, top businesses such as Yahoo, Coca Cola and Hilton are pooling their resources into the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.

As Barry Schwartz states, “Cybersquatters purchase domain names that are similar to trademark names, such as yahooemail.com and hilt0n.com. Some use that traffic to earn an affiliate commission on sales from the trademark owners, but others may use it for criminal activities, such as phishing for passwords, bank account details and other personal information.”

Concerning the coalition’s priority, CADNA President Josh Bourne states, “To effectively combat cybersquatting…and other Internet-based fraud, CADNA will work at the national and international levels to make these practices difficult to establish and unprofitable to maintain.”