Brands online face more assaults

  Whether it's cybersquatters selling fake iPods or porn purveyors perverting Disney cartoons, 2007 was another tough year for companies trying to defend their brands online, according to MarkMonitor Inc.'s Brandjacking Index report released this week. Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer for the San Francisco-based brand protection firm, says his company surveyed attacks on 30 brand names in the Interbrand 100 list and found that criminals continue a relentless assault on companies' good names. For example, over the course of 2007 there were more than 382,000 instances of cybersquatting--where "brandjackers" create Web sites similar to real ones, but with evil intent-a 33% increase from Q1 to Q4. And in Q4, MarkMonitor estimates on average there were 16 million suspicious e-mails every day.

Felman says 2008 will be more precarious for brand owners. He says a relatively new scam, vishing, looms. He describes it as combining VoIP and e-mail to convince naïve users to give sensitive data to crooks over the phone in response to an e-mail. Although luckless consumers are the ones robbed of their cash, he argues brand owners ultimately lose because their reputation suffers.

The battle with criminals over brands will persist, Felman says, since "graft goes back to ancient times." Adding, "Brand protection is like brushing your teeth. You should never stop." Lucky for him MarkMonitor sells the equivalent of Internet toothpaste.