Is Your Brand Being Impersonated? Here’s What You Can Do

10 - April 2023

This article was originally published to IT Business Net on April 10th, 2023

One of my favorite journalists, Cory Doctorow, was recently duped by a brand impersonator. He tried to order Thai food by googling the name of his favorite restaurant. The top result was a sponsored post with the same name as the Thai restaurant he wanted, but it was a fraudulent website.

“We got scammed,” writes Doctorow. The new site was a lookalike for that of his regular restaurant, but the fake one had significantly marked up the prices and relayed the order to a different restaurant. The scammer also double-billed Doctorow for the order.

This brand impersonation incident is anything but isolated. The FTC reports that impersonation fraud jumped 85 percent between 2020 and 2021, resulting in $2 billion in losses. This increase comes from fraudsters using ever-more sophisticated technology. They not only publish phony websites and buy fake ads, but they also create deceptive social media profiles and counterfeit mobile apps in an effort to defraud consumers…

Read the full article “Is Your Brand Being Impersonated? Here’s What You Can Do” on the IT Business Net Website.