Coronavirus: Online Threats Going Viral - Part 1: Domain Names

As news of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to emerge, CSC has undertaken the first in a series of studies looking at how the development of the crisis has affected online content. This first article looks at the numbers of registered domains with names containing coronavirus-related strings - 'coronavirus' or 'covid(-)19' (with an optional hyphen) - and analyses the types of content present on the associated websites.

In our investigation, we found 6,341 domains containing the string 'covid(-)19', and 11,552 domains containing 'coronavirus'^[1]. Many of these registered domain names include other terms implying that the associated websites feature neutral or informational content. However, significant numbers incorporate particular keywords suggesting that they could have been registered to take advantage of people’s fears surrounding coronavirus to attract web traffic. These domains may be used to create websites associated with scams, or with the intention of generating revenue.

Table 1: Total number of coronavirus-related domains containing keywords of particular interest

We further analysed this set of domains to determine^[2] when the domains were registered. This analysis shows that of the 2,000-plus domains for which creation dates were identifiable, only 17 domains (0.8%) were registered before 2020, and 68% (1,400+ domains) were registered since the start of March - i.e. just two weeks prior to the date of analysis.

Figure 1: Daily numbers of registrations of coronavirus-related domains featuring keywords of relevance

N.B. We truncated the graph at three days prior to the date of analysis, as there can typically be a delay of around two to three days between the date of domain registration and its inclusion and detection in the published zone file. Accordingly, the numbers of registrations shown for (at least) the two or three days prior to analysis are likely to be underestimates.

These figures provide a striking illustration of how escalating real-world issues can produce a flurry of corresponding activity online, with an enormous increase in registrations as countries began to announce lockdown measures throughout March. We can also see spikes in the domain-registration graph associated with specific events:

• The first announcements of the emergence of coronavirus outside China in late January
• The WHO announcement of COVID-19 as the specific strain on February 11
• The start of Italy's lockdown in late February^[3]

What's in a domain name?

Nearly 75% of the 2,646 domains with keywords of interest produced a live webpage response^[4]. Around three-quarters of these currently do not point to an active site, i.e. no page title, or a title suggesting that only a holding page is present. That said, even these may have been registered with a goal of monetising the domain name, either through pay-per-click links on the site or explicitly offering the domain name for sale.

Setting aside inactive domains still leaves around 500 coronavirus-related domains featuring relevant keywords and appearing to host active websites. Thirty-two of those 500 achieve significant web traffic, attracting over 8,000 Internet users per day between them. The websites resolve to a range of content, although just over a third resolve to active e-commerce sites offering face masks for sale. Others include: e-commerce sites selling coronavirus testing kits or other healthcare products; sites linking to online pharmacies; sites offering global coronavirus tracking functions; and a range of other informational sites.

Table 2: Description of content for coronavirus-related domains featuring keywords of relevance and attracting significant levels of web traffic

N.B. (i) Sites that do not currently include active website content are shown in italics.
(ii) Domain names are not shown, and any company names have been redacted.

Figure 2: Example screenshots of (top to bottom) high-traffic e-commerce sites offering the sale of face masks, or coronavirus testing kits; a coronavirus tracking site; and a site promoting an online pharmacy

Why does it matter to brands?

Registering a domain and creating an associated website is quick, simple, and essentially unregulated. This provides a range of opportunities for any would-be infringer and, as our findings have shown, can pose a variety of risks for internet users. Where physical products are being sold, the items could be manufactured using sub-standard materials, or without rigorous quality checks. Consumers run the risk that products may not just be ineffective, but actually harmful. Many of the identified e-commerce sites offered products using known and trusted brand names. The risk of these being counterfeit is one reason why brand owners should pay close attention to the developing landscape, and take appropriate enforcement action to protect their customers and their reputation.

The social risks of misinformation

Where unofficial sites use the name or branding of a legitimate health organisation (e.g. CDC or WHO) to appear official or lend credibility to its content, the public is at risk of incorrect safety information or a phishing attack. 

Figure 3: An example of a site infringing on CDC and WHO branding. The domain has been registered using a privacy-protection service to hide the contact details of the owner

Other identified websites offer coronavirus tracking mobile apps - a risk to the public in light of reports that some coronavirus tracking apps actually host malicious content or ransomware.

Recommendations for brand owners

As the coronavirus story continues to develop, it is advisable to monitor for third-party domain names - and material in other online areas - that may be using a brand name to lend credibility to site content or offer the sale of counterfeits. CSC's monitoring technology is able to search for brand-related appearances across a range of internet content types, and prioritise findings by the number and prominence of brand mentions, and their proximity to keywords or key phrases of particular relevance or concern. Following identification of infringing content, a rapid process of enforcement for the removal of damaging content can help to protect customers, company reputation, and revenue. Above all, throughout this developing crisis, it's most important to take all necessary precautions - both online and offline - to be safe and stay well!

References

[1] Numbers correct as of 18/03/2020
[2] Wherever this information is available via an automated look-up
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/06/health/wuhan-coronavirus-timeline-fast-facts/index.html
[4] Excluding those that return no HTTP response, or generate an error code

This article was first published on 26 March 2020 at:
https://www.cscdigitalbrand.services/blog/coronavirus-online-threats-part-1/

Also published at:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20200409-coronavirus-online-threats-going-viral-part-1-domain-names/

Holiday Shopping Events - 11.11, Black Friday and Cyber Monday e-commerce domain trends: Part 2

This is the second in a two-part series of articles looking at domain registrations associated with the 11.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday shopping events, following the introductory post published in early November.

During the shopping season, over a period between November 5 and December 8, we monitored the number of new domain registrations with names containing the strings '11(-)11,' 'black(-)friday' and 'cyber(-)monday' (with optional hyphens in each case).

We observed considerable activity over the five-week period, with significant increases in the numbers of domains (over 20%, in the case of Black Friday domains) compared to the total pre-existing at the start of the study period. Registrations also peaked close to the actual day of the shopping events, especially for Singles Day and Black Friday.

These data show that significant proportions of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday domains (20.5% and 31.5%, respectively) also feature e-commerce-related keywords in their domain names, suggesting they have been specifically registered to attract web traffic associated with Internet users interested in making online purchases across the period. In both cases, the registration activity spanned an extended period of several weeks in the run-up to the events, with the keywords 'deal' and 'sale' commonly used, as shown below.

A smaller proportion of the 11.11 domains (under 5%) also feature English-language e-commerce keywords. Inspection of the domain names suggests that many of them may not even have been registered with the 11.11 event in mind, and may simply be using '1111' as a generic string.

Similar to the trends seen in the set of pre-existing domains considered in the previous study, .com continues to account for the majority of new registrations in each of these three cases, though new generic top-level domains, such as .xyz, .site, and .online are also significant, accounting for notable proportions of the registrations.

Other observations from the sets of newly-registered domains

In addition to the domain names including e-commerce-related keywords, many of the event-specific domains registered during the monitoring period also include the names of known and trusted brands, as well as the names of online marketplaces.

While some of these may have been registered by the brand owners to promote their own e-commerce holiday events, a significant proportion certainly were registered by third parties. These individuals may be abusing the brand names to misdirect and monetise web traffic, by diverting users to their own content via re-direction or sponsored advertisements, or by offering the sale of counterfeit items. Amongst the brand names seen to have been used in this way are:

• For 11.11: The e-commerce sites Aliexpress, Tmall, JD, Suning, Gome and Pinduoduo, in addition to Bilibili (a Chinese video-sharing site themed around animation and games).
• For Black Friday: Amazon (including a range of mis-spellings), eBay, Paypal, Walmart, Apple (and iPhone), Netflix, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Dr. Martens, Ugg, Uber, Ford, Toyota, Jeep and Sonos.
• For Cyber Monday: Walmart and Ugg (as also seen for the Black Friday domains), and Macy’s.

There’s also a suggestion that some of the '11(-)11' domains have been specifically registered with a Chinese-speaking audience in mind. These include examples making use of the keywords 'guanggunjie' (the Chinese name for Singles Day), 'mai' (the Chinese word for 'buy' or 'sell', depending on the intonation), and 'xianyu', the name of the Chinese-language sub-platform on the Taobao marketplace offering the sale of used goods.

Some of the identified sites appear to be non-infringing, and resolve either to generic stand alone e-commerce sites, or content relating to the brand owner’s own products or services. In these cases, the owners of the domains appear simply to be taking advantage of the buzz surrounding the holiday shopping events to drive web traffic to their own content.

Other sites feature links to third-party sites, such as examples that aggregate marketplace listings, and then link through to the official marketplace, to generate affiliate revenue from visitor clicks. Other domains were found to resolve to coupon or deal sites. These examples may also be of interest to brand owners, since it may be unclear whether the offer is being made by the referring site itself or by the brand in question. There is also a risk that these sites may collect customer information for their own use before forwarding the user on the to the official brand website.

However, a number of more egregious types of content were also identified. These include:

• Sites offering the sale of branded goods, which may be counterfeit. These examples may be particularly concerning, and misleading to customers, if the domain name includes the name of the brand being infringed.
• Domain names including the names of trusted brands, but which resolve to unrelated third-party sites, which in many cases feature e-commerce-related content.

Key take-aways

Across the period surrounding the 11.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday holiday shopping events, significant activity associated with the registration of directly-relevant domain names was identified. Much of this activity is legitimate, and the period does provide an opportunity for brand owners to take advantage of increased web traffic and event-specific web searches by internet users to promote their own goods and services. However, the increased activity also provides opportunities for unscrupulous infringers to abuse the names of trusted brands to drive visitors to their own content, or to sell counterfeit products.

The findings highlight the importance for brand owners not only to protect their intellectual property defensively, through the registration of a strategic domain portfolio, but also to proactively monitor for activity by third parties, to allow enforcement action to be taken as appropriate. The range of content types seen, and the keywords and top-level domains used, illustrate the requirement for this process to take as holistic an approach as possible.

This article was first published on 16 December 2019 at:
https://www.cscdigitalbrand.services/blog/holiday-shopping-events-part-2/

Holiday Shopping Starts Now! How will 11.11, Black Friday and Cyber Monday e-commerce domains trend? Part 1

The month of November marks the start of a busy shopping period in both the offline and online worlds, not only because of the proximity of the festive time of year, but also because of a number of specific commerce-related events. In this article - the first in a series of two - CSC looks at domain registration trends related to holiday shopping.

The concept of Singles Day (or Guanggun Jie, literally 'Single Sticks Holiday') began at Nanjing University in China in the early 1990s, marking November 11 (11.11 or double-11) as the day of celebration. But the commercial opportunities associated with the event were spotted in the late 2000s^[1], when the Alibaba marketplace starting using the date for its annual online sale in 2009^[2] and then trademarked the term double-11 ( 双十一) in 2012^[3]. Singles Day has subsequently grown to become the biggest shopping day in the world, with combined sales across Alibaba and JD.com alone totalling in excess of $44 billion in 2017^[4]. Though the occasion continues to grow in prominence, it remains most popular in the Far East, perhaps due to the coincidence of sharing the date with Veterans or Remembrance Day in the West.

In the US - and much of the western world - the period around Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday of November, has also long been popular with shoppers. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has traditionally been regarded as the start of the Christmas shopping season in the US. More recently, the coining of the following Monday as Cyber Monday was introduced, producing a four-day-long weekend designed to encourage consumers to shop online. Online sales on Cyber Monday have grown year-on-year since 2006, reaching almost $8 billion on 2018^[5].

The use of references to Singles Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday as ways of promoting e-commerce, and increasing sales for internet retailers, continues to remain common practice. Domains can be registered by individuals for a number of different reasons - in the context of Singles Day and the Thanksgiving weekend, domains can be used in the creation of event-specific e-commerce sites and to promote particular brands, marketplaces, or products.

Beyond this, the registration of domains can be profitable even in cases where no live site is configured. In many cases, domain names, including high-relevance keywords, can be registered on spec, to see which examples generate significant volumes of web traffic. This traffic can then be monetised by the site owner through the inclusion of sponsored advertisements (pay-per-click links) on the webpage. This practice alone can be of particular concern to a brand owner if their brand name is used in the domain name and the sponsored ads direct visitors to competitor sites.

In this study, we consider domains with names containing the strings '11(-)11'^[6], 'black(-)friday' and 'cyber(-)monday' (with optional hyphens in each case). The information is derived from domain name zone files, which are data files containing lists of registered domains, published by the registries responsible for the operation of particular domain name extensions (top-level domains, or TLDs). Zone files are available for the majority of generic TLDs (gTLDs such as .com, .net, etc.) new gTLDs, plus a selection of country-code TLDs (ccTLDs).

The following statistics show the numbers of pre-existing domains already registered at the start of November 2019.

These statistics illustrate the scale of domain name registrations relating to the November events, and the proportion of these domains, which - on the basis of the associated keywords - have presumably been registered to promote sites or attract traffic relating to e-commerce activity. For the Black Friday and Cyber Monday domains, significant proportions (26.1% and 34.9%, respectively) feature keywords pertaining explicitly to e-commerce. The share for 11.11 domains is rather smaller, due in part to the more generic nature of the string itself, and perhaps in part to targeting the Far East audience with less reliance on English-language keywords.

The TLD data shows that, although the majority of these sites exist on common, familiar gTLDs such as .com and .net, other new gTLDs (e.g., .xyz and .top), as well as ccTLDs (e.g., .uk and .dk) are also important.

In cases where brand names are explicitly being used to promote competitor products or offer the sale of counterfeits, this activity can be highly damaging to the brand owner, in terms of lost revenue and reputation damage.

CSC recommends that brand owners carry out proactive monitoring for the registration of new domains relating to their brands, which is particularly important at times of the year when e-commerce activity is at a high. Monitoring should also take a holistic approach, covering a wide range of relevant TLDs and keywords. Infringing domains can potentially be taken down via a range of enforcement processes. In some cases, other approaches may also be appropriate, such as attempting to dispute or acquire highly relevant or desirable domain names, or looking to launch a snapback procedure to register a domain after the expiration of its current registration period.

Our second article in this series will address trends in the numbers of new registrations across the Singles Day and Thanksgiving weekend events.

References

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/black-friday/0/what-is-chinas-singles-day-and-how-does-it-compare-to-black-frid/
[2] https://econsultancy.com/singles-day-2018-alibaba/
[3] https://www.gtld.com/insights/blog/2014/11/happy-guanggun-jie/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles%27_Day
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/cyber-monday-sales-break-record-a-record-7point9-billion-spent-online.html
[6] This study excludes domains (deemed non-relevant) where the 11(-)11 string is immediately preceded or followed by another digit, e.g., 000000111111.com

This article was first published on 11 November 2019 at:
https://www.cscdigitalbrand.services/blog/how-will-black-friday-ecommerce-domains-trend/

External online threats to your brands

Domain name security and threat intelligence

With nearly 4 billion users and an associated economy of over $4 trillion, the Internet comprises a major ecosystem for businesses today. However, it also provides significant opportunities for criminals to take advantage of trusted brands for their own gain. There are a number of types of possible infringement, including trade in counterfeit goods, online fraud, digital piracy and other kinds of general brand abuse across a range of internet channels, which can have direct impact on the value of brands and the profitability of the associated organisations.

Many types of brand abuse (e.g. domain name infringements, false affiliation claims, unauthorised use of logos or other intellectual property, negative customer comments and brand guideline non-compliance from legitimate affiliates and partners) are familiar to brand representatives responsible for marketing and branding. However, the range of possible infringements extends much further than this, into more sinister areas with significant security implications.

One obvious area of online abuse that can directly affect a company’s bottom line - by way of customer losses and damage to brand reputation - is cybercrime (e.g. phishing). Research indicates that 65% of consumers would change suppliers following an experience of fraud or data breach. Currently 54% of businesses are only 'somewhat confident' in their ability to detect fraudulent activity, although a 2018 study found that 9% of organisations say that their most disruptive case of fraud in the previous two years had caused losses of $5 million or more, causing damage to brand strength, business and regulator relations and employee morale.

Phishing activity, where infringers aim to steal log-in credentials or other types of personal information, is often perpetrated through fake websites. This highlights the need to track the registration of brand-specific third-party domain names and monitor for subsequent changes to website content. However, associated activity can also occur across other channels, including standalone websites, social media and spam e-mails - all of which must be considered if the problem is to be addressed comprehensively. Social media is a common channel for the creation of fake profiles that can be used for executive impersonation and subsequent money-transfer scams.

With regard to domain name abuse, even cases where no live site content is present can be significant, since domains can be used purely for their e-mail functionality - that is, creating a convincing fake e-mail address from which to send phishing e-mails - illustrating the requirement to analyse mail-exchange records and track spam email traffic in order to identify fraudulent communications. In addition, criminals typically take a multi-stage approach to online fraud, with stolen credentials often traded online, frequently via carding websites and forums or on the Dark Web. Monitoring these deeper areas of the Internet can provide early warning of compromised accounts or credit cards, making it possible to deactivate them before significant financial losses take place.

Beyond classic brand infringements, the online appearance of malicious software (malware) can also have significant security implications for brand owners. Types of malware can include keyloggers which steal passwords and other confidential content, and ransomware which locks files and demands payment for their release. Malware is spread through visits to infected websites (e.g. accessed via search engine results or sponsored ads) and opening infected attachments in e-mails. In many cases, the spread of malware involves the use by criminals of brand-related hooks, encouraging users (i.e. customers or employees) to access the infected content. Malware can also open an organisation up to infiltration by hackers, though this can also arise as a result of employee social engineering or lax security policies. Hacking activity can damage an organisation in a number of different ways, including compromisation of sensitive customer records. At least nine high-profile cases, each involving access to more than 50 million sets of credentials, have been reported in the press since 2013. Cases of this nature can have significant direct financial implications, with the average cost to organisations of data breaches in 2018 estimated at over $5 million per incident.

Consequently, the implementation of a holistic brand protection programme should be a crucial requirement for brand owners, ensuring that responsibility for programme ownership - including budget provision - is shared across all relevant stakeholders. Online fraud and cybercrime go hand in hand with other types of infringement; to combat these risks, various departments (e.g. marketing, legal and IT security) need to work together. All might have different objectives, yet their common goal should be to keep their organisation protected, secure and safely operating online at all times.

This article was first published on 28 November 2019 at:
https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/index.php/external-online-threats-your-brands

Image-Only Infringements

by Irene Oh and David Barnett

Introduction

Often in the context of brand protection services, we encounter online content that does not include any text-based reference to a brand name, but instead uses an image that is associated with the brand in question, or one of its products. This can be found on e-commerce sites, independent websites, social media posts or accounts, and is sometimes referred to as graphical brand-specific content.

Use of official images without authorisation from the rights owner, with or without the associated presence of a logo or a figurative trademark, can be deemed an infringement. Infringing images can comprise a logo or a figurative trademark (i.e. a registered trademark, or an image of a product copied from the brand owner’s official website or authorised store front, including a screenshot of a site taken from a mobile phone).

Detection

Detection of these types of results online can be difficult for the rights owner, particularly given the fact that the conventional way of searching for infringing results is via the use of text-based keywords, which may not effective at detecting images. In cases where detection of images is a required focus of the monitoring, it may instead be necessary to use generic product- or industry-specific search terms expected to appear in conjunction with the images of interest, though this approach can generate high volumes of non-relevant results.

Since image posting is becoming a more popular means for users to share Internet content, service providers are also being forced to up their game. Some of the most well-known online image-search tools have existed for some time now. However, some e-commerce sites, such as websites belonging to the Alibaba Group, have been developing similar functions, and allow their users to perform image searches across their websites.

However, as effective as these various image-search tools can be to bring back relevant results, there is still much scope for improvement. We have seen that a slight modification to an image, such as the removal or addition of a sentence within an image, can cause an 'un-matching' of the result from the search, thereby causing potentially-relevant results to be missed.

Enforcement actions: current state-of-play

Depending on the channel on which an image infringement is detected, we may be able to file a copyright complaint to request its removal; e-commerce sites such as eBay and the Alibaba Group do have procedures to report copyright infringements, and the Chinese sites Tmall and Taobao have a tool called Bazai, designed to help their fashion sellers protect their pictures from being stolen by another seller.

US-based sites, social media sites, and website hosting providers generally follow complaint procedures based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), although DMCA filling is also widely used by others outside of the US.

The necessary requirements to start enforcement actions can vary, depending on where the infringing images are found; however, providing the link to the original image is generally a must when filling complaints.

Often, sites following DMCA processes, or those with any sort of copyright complaint procedure, are compliant and quick to take action on behalf of a brand. Nonetheless, we have experienced challenges in some countries where their copyright law is slightly different. For example, Allegro - a Polish e-commerce site - has had to adapt its policy to the Polish Copyright Act^[1]:

Copyright exception for out-of-commerce works

The amendment introduces a new form of exception based on the framework Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Key Principles on the Digitisation and Making Available of Out-of-Commerce Works, which was discussed in the European Commission in 2011.

An out-of-commerce work in the Polish Act means a work that is neither: available for customers in the course of trade with the consent of its copyright holder; nor placed on the market in the form of copies in number satisfying rational needs of customers; nor made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.

In addition to copyright complaint, in cases where the image consists of a logo or registered figurative trademark, another option to have the image removed is to file a trademark infringement complaint. Of course, the feasibility of this option needs to be reviewed case-by-case.

Despite these possible enforcement routes, rights owners should also take note that some instances of image use may constitute fair use, in cases where education, parody, or reviews are involved. In these cases, there is a possibility that attempted enforcement action can have an adverse effect on public relations. Beyond this, our experience in the brand-protection industry suggests that many Internet users simply have virtually no knowledge of copyright law.

Enforcement actions: future developments

While it appears that many countries have mature image copyright complaints procedures in place, we have become aware this year of approval of a new EU directive on copyright, though this has not yet been implemented.

Reference

[1] http://communia-association.org/2015/12/17/summary-of-2015-amendments-to-the-polish-copyright-act/

This article was first published on 24 October 2019 at:
https://www.cscdigitalbrand.services/blog/image-only-infringements/

Combating Online Counterfeiting: An Essential Brand-Protection Goal

The scale of the problem

A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office found that trade in counterfeit goods now accounts for around 3.3% of global trade, and is worth over $500 billion^[1]. The research found that footwear, clothing, leather goods, and electrical equipment were the most widely affected product types, with the most highly targeted brands based in the United States, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.

More and more of this trade takes place online. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that two out of every five branded products purchased online are counterfeits^[2]. Many of these fake items originate from China and the Far East, where a significant amount of legitimate manufacturing also takes place. Europol has noted that online marketplaces have become key distribution channels for counterfeit goods^[3]. In a joint global operation between law enforcement authorities, anti-counterfeiting associations and brand-owner representatives in 2016, over 4,500 domain names were seized as part of a shutdown of web shops and marketplace listings offering the sale of counterfeit merchandise^[4].

How should brand owners respond?

These striking statistics highlight how important it is for brand owners to monitor the internet for brand-related eCommerce activity, and to take enforcement action against infringements they find. This is because the implications of counterfeiting for brand owners are not just financial. Fake items are typically manufactured to lower standards, leading to safety and quality issues that can adversely affect a brand’s reputation.

A monitoring and enforcement plan should be holistic, because counterfeit goods are typically distributed using a range of channels, including online marketplaces, mobile apps, and websites returned by search engines and promoted via sponsored advertisements.

And in addition to classic brand monitoring, there are other steps brand owners can take to mitigate the effects of counterfeiting. Customer education is key, including the use of product features that help customers identify legitimate goods, and encouraging them to use approved e-commerce partners and suppliers. Many brands take this approach even further, turning their customers into proactive advocates who watch out for non-genuine products and report the associated sellers to the organisation via an abuse mailbox.

It may also be advisable for brands to incorporate into their products specific features (such as holograms or packaging characteristics) that are difficult or costly to replicate. Many brands are already doing this, driving growth in the global market for anti-counterfeit packaging across pharmaceuticals^[5], automobile parts^[6], and clothing and accessories^[7] to a forecast value of $200 billion by 2024^[8].

There are also services to allow brand owners to certify their own products as legitimate, often providing information (such as a security code to be displayed in an e-commerce product image) for buyers to check against a database.

Online brand monitoring and enforcement

Some elements of online brand protection can be carried out in-house by brand owners. However, we strongly advise companies to partner with a dedicated provider who can help them protect their revenues - and their customers - on the internet. Some providers place automation at the forefront of their service offerings. But without expert help to manually review the data, this approach can often result in a data dump.

CSC’s Discovery Engine technology combines internet metasearching with direct monitoring of data sources of interest to identify suspect e-commerce activity across the full range of online channels. This automated analysis uses contextual matching to identify the most relevant content, exclude false positives, and extracts relevant information such as seller name, price and quantity information, making it possible to easily aggregate findings and allow our analysts to identify high-impact targets for prioritised action.

For the most significant infringers, it may also be appropriate for brand owners to use of a number of value-add services. An online open-source investigation can build a more complete picture of an entity of interest, including contact details and links to other associated websites or businesses. It can also identify the scale of their online presence and - in some cases - information on the sources of the counterfeit product. This information can form the basis of an on-the-ground investigation, physical raid, or legal action.

Test purchases may also be necessary for making a final determination of the counterfeit nature of a product. Monitoring is able to identify characteristics that are suggestive of a suspicious listing, but only a physical purchase can finally confirm that the merchandise is fake.

Having identified that an e-commerce seller is acting illegally, a number of options are available to have the infringing content removed and drive customers back to the legitimate sources for products. These can range from working with a marketplace or social media site operator to have items delisted, to deactivating a website that has been used for the creation of a lookalike web shop.

Raw data extracted from enforced websites (such as traffic data) or marketplace listings (e.g. price and quantity) can also form the basis of a return-on-investment calculation, helping the brand owner assess the financial value of a successful program.

References

[1] https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/trade-in-fake-goods-is-now-33-of-world-trade-and-rising.htm
[2] http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-216
[3] http://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/europol-%E2%80%93-euipo-2017-situation-report-counterfeiting-and-piracy-in-eu
[4] http://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/over-4500-illicit-domain-names-seized-for-selling-counterfeit-products
[5] http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/anti-counterfeit-pharmaceutical-packaging-market-global-trends-analysis-and-forecast-2016-2026-1218578.htm
[6] http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/anti-counterfeit-automobile/release-1203030.htm
[7] http://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/anti-counterfeit-clothing-and-accessories-packaging-market
[8] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-global-anti-counterfeit-packaging-market-size-is-expected-to-reach-199-6-billion-by-2024–rising-at-a-market-growth-of-12-2-cagr-during-the-forecast-period-300849265.html

This article was first published on 19 September 2019 at:
https://www.cscdigitalbrand.services/blog/combating-online-counterfeiting/