(TR17) (FIC) Domain names: into the wild

More than one thousand top-level domains (nTLDs) have been created in recent years. It has been a boon for cyber-squatters and attackers who use bogus domains to divert web traffic from legitimate sites and launch all sorts of attacks, including phishing and spoofing. The situation has reached a point where 75% of internet domains similar to those of large organisations are thought to be held by third parties (source: CSC). In July 2022, an unknown person used a German registrar to register 967 domain names ending in .fr that imitated well-known brands and organisations. Despite the threat, most organisations have not yet implemented current security measures. How should you choose your internet registrar? What defensive or proactive measures are there? How can you monitor your brands and web domains? What procedures are there to withdraw fraudulent domains? What can ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) and the TREx and DPML programmes do?