How look-alikes are used
- Fake invoices and payment changes sent to your customers or vendors.
- Phishing pages that copy your website to collect logins or payments.
- Fake job offers or rental listings using your name.
Protect yourself
- Register the obvious ones: common misspellings, a missing or doubled letter, the .net and .co versions, with and without hyphens. Point them at your real site.
- Give each one a DMARC record at reject and an SPF record of v=spf1 -all, so they can’t send mail either.
- Tell customers your one real domain and that you never change payment details by email.
- Run our free look-alike domain check to see which typo versions of your domain are already registered and which have email set up.
- Search occasionally for new registrations containing your name; some services alert you.
If someone registered one
If it’s being used for fraud, report it to the registrar and hosting provider listed in its registration, with evidence. If you hold a trademark, the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) lets you seek a transfer through an approved provider such as WIPO. That’s a legal process; talk to your attorney.
Written by Nikita Huttenlocher, founder and lead engineer at Huttenlocher Technologies, a web design and software company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.