Individuals give great importance to protect their reputation because once tarnished, you could lose credibility.

The same is true with domain names or trademarks upon whose good standing success is measured, especially in the online marketplace. The scary news is they are constantly under threat from ill-intended parties and cybercriminals eager to cash in on their prestige. The common tactics employed include the following:

Typosquatting

Your domain name is deliberately yet subtly misspelled so that others will think it's you they're dealing with. This is often used for phishing, or when an email sender pretending to be you tricks others into revealing sensitive information for illicit purposes. In the end, you suffer the nasty consequences when the victim realizes he or she had been conned.

Cybersquatting

Someone buys a domain name that is closely associated with a popular person or brand for the purpose of benefiting from its prestige. The freeloader is also hoping to sell it for a hefty sum so that the offended party can get rid of the nuisance.

Copycatting

As the name connotes, infringers come up with an exact match of a victim's domain name and website in order to divert traffic, and profits, away from the legitimate site.

So, you see, the threat is real and there's a lot of goodwill that's on the line. Of course, you can try and keep a manual watch over possible infringements. But with no idea how and where they could come from, not to mention the sheer volume of possible attempts, it would be an impossible task.

But there's a practical and systematic way, one that makes use of technology, to serve as your eyes and ears against attacks. It's called a brand monitor.

Keeping an Eye on Your Brand

A brand monitor is an online tool that helps keep your domain name and trademarks safe from fraudsters. The tool offers online brand protection and works in several ways:

Monitoring your keywords

The keywords or specific terms that are associated with your product or trademark are perennial targets for impersonation. With a brand monitor, you can add those keywords to the tool and, every day, it will go over the millions of existing domains as well as the hundreds of thousands of newly-registered ones to detect any changes related to your keywords. That should give you sufficient warning to respond accordingly.

Predicting possible typos and misspellings

A determined copycat can come up with all sorts of creative permutations on your keyword or brand name. Looking out against them is possible using the predictive capability of artificial intelligence which is used by a brand monitor. Under this method, algorithms draw a list of all possible misspellings and typos on your brand name. Any such matches can be tracked and remedies are drawn up on your end.

Getting timely alerts

A brand monitor can provide timely alerts whenever a possible breach is detected. You can activate this feature by configuring your emails so that a notification will be displayed if, say, a newly-registered or recently-expired domain uses a keyword which you have included in your watch list.

Online Monitoring Platform

There are now more than 300 million registered domains vying for consumer attention, each one banking on the goodwill of their names to make it in the online marketplace. Such goodwill doesn't come by chance but is the result of diligent efforts to protect it from those who wish to ride on its appeal if not destroy it for some selfish reasons.

Keeping your name clean requires proactive measures, one of which consists of selecting an online monitoring platform with best-in-class technology that can protect your brand, your domain reputation, and your company's bottom line.

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Making the most out of your most valuable online asset requires earning trust — and keeping it. To do that, you need to look after the things that make your brand stand out and defend it against the elements that are out to steal, if not destroy, the good reputation that it has built. A brand monitor is a necessary investment in that regard because it provides a daily monitor against infringers and their tactics.