Hello everyone,

When it comes to the online world, I reckon I’m pretty savvy.

However, in the last 2 years, even I have fallen for scams - such is their incrase in volume and sophistication!

One example: the time I filled in what I thought was the DVLA website to obtain an expedited provisional driving license for someone, only to find that not only had I paid £125 out to scammers.

Actually, I wasn’t fussed about the loss of £125, although that was very annoying; it was the fact that I’d given away personal data that made me really cross with myself!

Identity theft is a real problem and scammers fleece you for money and then sell your data, so it’s a double whammy.

 

So, it is for many of our clients at the moment.

We’re seeing so much fraud online and the banks, the police and the Government seem to be way behind the scammers. It almost becomes a daily issue for businesses to fend off some scam scheme or another, whether it's a phishing attack, a whaling attack, or various spoofing instances.

In essence, in times such as this if it's profitable, you'll see it increase in sophistication and frequency. 

However, there are things that business owners can and should do.

The first and foremost easy win is looking at your domain name portfolio. Have you left valuable domain names available for others to obtain? We did this exercise a little while ago and now I know all our domains such as virtuosolegal.co.uk and others point to our virtuosolegal.com website.

We’ve also taken them off the market, so that bad actors can’t get their hands on them. Our online domain name experts Kostas and Kemal first did a review of what we had, and what was available and then produced a list of “must fence off” domain names.

We then grabbed that space and put all the domains onto our reminder service so that they don’t drop off our radar. This has benefitted us not only on the basis of SEO and traffic - but more insofar as it's harder for scammers to look and feel like us online. 

In such cases, they typically move on to a softer target - as there are plenty out there.

 

For some clients, the price of peace is eternal vigilance and demand for things such as domain name and trade mark watching services have never been more popular.

When monitoring domain names there are some telltale signs that our experts immediately spot, saving our clients from trawling through masses and masses of data to find potential problems.

It's the same with trade mark watching services. We monitor lots of trade marks on our systems and get global reports. We then sort the meaningful risk from baseline alerts and report back to our clients only where there’s a problem of significance.

Indeed, we are also increasingly using sophisticated software for clients to track online sales from dubious sources or simply tracking what is happening and where in their supply and distribution channels.

The one thing I have learned, however, is that whilst all this great software can identify risk, and produce some interesting reports, it takes experts and judgment to ascertain the real risks and elephant traps and then take a commercial view over what to.

This is where we see the future of brand protection - online. As always it should be done with a critical analysis of the risk, cost-effectively and commercially.

For many of our clients, the online space has never been more important. If you’re ready to talk about your online brand protection strategy, then we’d be happy to help and guide you through the minefield.

Have you encountered an increase in scams? 

Do you know what's out there - or is ignorance bliss for you at the moment?

Would love to have a chat and help you make sure that you're not next.

Have a brilliant week.


Liz​