AnnualCreditReport.com – TypoSquatting Nightmare UNLEASHED!

Today the World Privacy Forum announced that more than 200 variants of “AnnualCreditReport.com” were registered by private companies taking advantage of typographical errors or misspellings and clever variants which confuse people.

Customers who are getting offered something that they are looking for, and find it at the great price they see advertised by the real website, similar offers, utilizing similar creative, take prey on these individuals, swindling them of their $35 and lots of personal information. But was annualcreditreport.com sleeping? Are they protecting their website, trademark and clients? No!

I have long been a believer in defensive registrations. They are part of the regiment I suggest to all my clients and associates. Sure, the expense does add up to quite a chunk of change once you have amassed a full suite of defensive registrations, but they are absolutely positively necessary to protect your brand and your customers!

“When you have 220 million people who are ready to put in an SSN, but a typo sends them to the wrong domain, then you have a problem,” Dixon said. “I don’t know how a consumer could wind their way through this labyrinth and see all the pitfalls.”

The report outlines one downside of the government’s response to identity theft, as announcements of new data leaks continue to plague the financial and healthcare industries and universities.

In my own research and work for many individuals, I have found it be to amazing the number of companies who turn a blind eye towards protection of their domain name, trademark and much of their intellectual property. One very large Miami-based adult entertainment site turned up more than 220 individuals who were typo-squatting or creating domain name confusion through the exploitation of his biggest brand name, earning him over $7MM last year! If he made $7MM, you can best the other 200 sites made a chunk of change too!

This site, unknowningly why to me, after being provided this FREE research study, showing the possible million bucks or more they are losing, was simply ignored and not another word was ever heard from the web media mogul. Try to save someone tons of cash and they must just have enough!

MasterCard announced that a security slip-up at a third-party company used to process transactions potentially released information regarding an estimated 40 million cardholders. It was insane that this much data could just be ‘leaked.’ The event itself caused me problems, and obviously all those of Citibank customers utilizing a MasterCard Debit Card. After speaking with “Mike” from Delhi, and reviewing my last 20 transactions, they were mostly recurring charges and were definitely all from the 10-15 places I make purchases from on a regular basis -and none were over $150. But they turned off my card until I called them to ask what was wrong. I can only imagine how many other individuals were affected more from the ‘potential risk’ vs. the actual risk.

If these individuals who have the data hold onto it for even 5 years before they start selling small pieces of it, the data is still going to be 50% valid, yeah, expiration dates may change, but they are fairly predictable, considering they always expire sometime in the future, with the same month as it was on the original data record. Even with a 10% hit rate, they’ll do great.