Profound levels of brand abuse, most notably through phishing and suspected domain squatting, have been unveiled by brand protection expert MarkMonitor.
The company’s Brandjacking Index studies how fraudsters are abusing financial brand names to lure unsuspecting consumers to questionable websites.
Examining four leading financial brands, the research indicates opportunistic fraudsters are quick to target citizens looking for ways to get back on their feet from financial challenges and the housing market bust.
“Scammers are preying upon consumer hardship, demonstrating incredible creativity in combining technology, social engineering techniques and current events,” said Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer at MarkMonitor.
“In this digital age, as the Internet pervades business and leisure, scam artists and fraudsters are quick to profit at the expense of trusted brands across a wide spectrum of industries.”
For this Brandjacking Index, MarkMonitor chose four top US and international bank brands to monitor for scams focusing on terms such as foreclosure, mortgage, refinance and unemployed. MarkMonitor sifted through 134 million public domain records and searched billions of Web pages and spam email messages during the study period.
Domains
More than 7,300 domains exploited the four financial brands in the study, with 16 per cent of the domains registered since September 2008.
Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of these cybersquatted domains registered since September 2008 used the focus terms – foreclosure, mortgage, refinance and unemployed – translating to a registration rate of more than one cybersquatted domain per day exploiting the focus terms.
Domains registered since September 2008 were 50 per cent more likely to use the focus terms than domains registered earlier.
Over half (52 per cent) of the domains identified in the study did not encrypt customer data, putting consumers’ personal identity information at risk.
Phishing
A record 502 organisations were phished in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 24 percent from Q1 2008: and 93 organisations were phished for the first time - 82 per cent were financial brands.
While financial services remain a popular target, payment service providers were the most phished category, at 42 per cent of total phish attacks.
Social media is one of the fastest-growing target category for phishers, with attacks increasing 241% against social media companies between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009.
Date: 30th, June, 2009
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