BlackRock Pursues Legal Action Against Owners of "Typosquatting" Domains
Summary:
Investment titan BlackRock has filed a legal complaint against owners of 44 alleged "typosquatting" domains for exploiting its name to deceive consumers and generate illicit profit. Many of these nefarious tactics include phishing schemes, malware, and ad fraud. The company has demanded legal action, seeking the transfer of offending domains, penalties, and injunctions against future cybersquatting or trademark infringement activities.
In response to a number of suspicious website domains and instances of "typosquatting" purported to exploit its brand, BlackRock, the renowned investment titan, has lodged a demand for stringent action. A formal legal issue raised by BlackRock on October 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia targeted the proprietors of 44 digital domain names comprised of keyword elements like ‘Blackrock’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘capital’, ‘crypto’, and ‘investments’. BlackRock proclaimed these domains were unethically acquired with the intention to amass earnings through consumer deception and diverting traffic using strategies like pay-per-click advertising, malware, and phishing schemes via emails. Citing research, BlackRock's legal representation from Wiley Rein LLP stated that over 95% of the top 500 universally visited websites face "typosquatting", a deceptive tactic to register a domain that resembles a legitimate site with a typing mistake. BlackRock accused these entities of infringing on the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act by registering domains strikingly similar to its own. Among the fraudulent domains were a few with mentions of crypto such as blackrock-crypto dot net—which was not operational—and crypto-blackrock dot com which offered website design; the majority of the tested sites by Cointelegraph either failed to load or were standard cybersquatting cases. BlackRock utilized publicly accessible domain registration data from the Whois database in an effort to identify the culprits. The company has demanded that these violating domains be passed over to their control, penalties be levied, and injunctions be issued against any future cybersquatting or trademark infringement of BLACKROCK, ALADDIN, and BLK by defendants. Imitation domain names are frequently used along with advertising platforms like Google and Facebook to propagate scams or spread malware. As per reports from Cointelegraph early this year, victims have been defrauded of more than $4 million via counterfeit websites marketed using Google Ads. Should we prohibit the payment of ransoms? Although the idea is appealing, it poses considerable risks.
Published At
10/12/2023 6:15:33 AM
Disclaimer: Algoine does not endorse any content or product on this page. Readers should conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the asset, company, or any information in this article and assume full responsibility for their decisions. This article should not be considered as investment advice. Our news is prepared with AI support.
Do you suspect this content may be misleading, incomplete, or inappropriate in any way, requiring modification or removal?
We appreciate your report.