In 2024, CueCards has witnessed an increase in phishing activity designed to replicate a brand's marks and service phrases via bogus multichannel communications strategies that prey upon that brand's most loyal customers. Fraud activity has surged 300% in recent months, according to the financial and law enforcement organizations with whom we work. Here, you'll find the CueCards top IP security tips for brands today.
Sophisticated phishing schemes use confusingly similar domain names to generate emails and create fake websites at these domains to impersonate legitimate businesses. For example, they may use an identical domain replacing .com with a different TLD (.us, .co, .net). Other times, they may alter the spelling of the brand subtly to create confusion, e.g. beaconcapitals.com rather than beaconcapital.com. They may also add generic elements to a brand to create confusion, e.g. lplbilling instead of lpl.
Two recent scams that we have been asked to assist in target business owners and their customers. In one instance, emails from a confusingly similar domain name were used to inform customers that the account used for the bills had changed and to forward all payments to the new account. Obviously, the new account was fraudulent, and siphoned money to the scam artist. Another scam involved a deep fake of a financial institution's website and customer service hotline. Similar domain names and phone numbers alerted customers to possible fraudulent activity to lure customers to a link that allowed the fraudsters to gain access to customer accounts and withdraw funds. These schemes are just a few examples.
While unraveling the financial and reputational damage is difficult, registered trademarks and copyrights may be helpful in stopping the imitation game by taking down infringing websites and/or domain names. With persistent scams, this can become a game of whack-a-mole as the scam moves from one domain to another. However, consistent use of the take down tools often deters the scammers and they move on to less vigilant targets. If you would like to discuss IP strategies to prepare your portfolio for action against these types of scams, and steps to take if and when they occur, please do not hesitate to contact us. #ip #phishing #fraud #trademark #copyright #domainname #ipstrategy #ipdisputes #noticeandtakedown #IPenforcement