MarkMonitor released their latest Brandjacking Index this week, finding cybersquatting is the most common form of brand abuse—with a 33 percent jump in one year—and that brandjackers are abusing an expanding range of brands that consumers use everyday. The report also shows recent and significant drops in domain kiting and related pay-per-click fraud, indicating that aggressive legal action on the part of brandholders as well as ICANN scrutiny are proving effective in deterring specific brandjacking techniques. In addition, phishing techniques and targets continued in 2007 to evolve with a 533% increase in phish attacks against the retail and services sector. There were 382,248 instances of cybersquatting identified in Q4, followed by 72,582 instances of false association and 27,098 instances of pay-per-click fraud.
For more coverage and the MarkMonitor news release, see:
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