Guides, news, and case notes on stolen domain recovery, domain hijacking, registrar security, UDRP disputes, domain monitoring, and online brand protection.
Cybersecurity and online brand protection meet at a single point: the attacker who wants your customers’ trust usually gets it by borrowing your name. A phishing email that appears to come from your company, a lookalike domain that hosts a copy of your login page, and a hijacked registrar account that lets a criminal send
Cybersecurity and Online Brand Protection: Where the Two Meet Read More »
Copyright infringement and digital piracy are the unauthorized copying, distribution or display of protected creative work online, from a product photo lifted for a fake store to a full course, film or software package shared without a license. For a business, the practical answer to both is the same: identify the copied material, find the
Copyright Infringement and Digital Piracy: Takedowns and Domains Read More »
Trademarks and brand protection are linked because almost every online remedy for brand misuse begins with the same question: do you have rights in this name? A trademark is a word, logo, slogan or design that identifies the source of goods or services, and a registered trademark is the most efficient way to prove those
Trademarks and Brand Protection: What a Registered Mark Does Online Read More »
Understanding intellectual property rights starts with a simple idea: the law lets you own certain things you cannot touch, such as a brand name, a photograph, an invention or a confidential process. Intellectual property rights are the legal rights that protect those intangible assets, and the four main types are trademarks, copyrights, patents and trade
Understanding Intellectual Property Rights for Online Brands Read More »
Online brand protection basics come down to three jobs: knowing where your brand name, logo and content are being used without permission, having the legal rights that let you stop that use, and acting quickly through the channel that actually removes the problem. Online brand protection is the ongoing work of defending a company’s names,
Online Brand Protection Basics: A Beginner’s Overview Read More »
When a domain name availability search tells you the perfect domain is taken, you still have five realistic options: confirm what “taken” actually means, buy the name from its current owner, wait for it to expire and backorder it, choose a variation of the name, or register it in a different extension. Which option makes
Domain Name Availability: What to Do When the Perfect Domain Is Taken Read More »
Squarespace acquired the Google Domains registrar business in 2023, and the domain registrations held at Google Domains were migrated to Squarespace. Google Domains no longer operates as a registrar. If you registered a domain there and have not moved it since, it is now managed in a Squarespace account, and keeping it safe means checking
Squarespace’s Google Domains Acquisition: Keeping Domains Safe Read More »
Domain name services are the separate services that attach to a registered domain and make it useful: the registration itself, DNS hosting, email, privacy protection, SSL/TLS certificates, and forwarding, along with security settings such as locks and DNSSEC. Each service can come from a different provider. A registrar may sell all of them in one
Domain Name Services: DNS, Email, Privacy, SSL and Forwarding Read More »
Registering a domain name takes a few minutes at any registrar, but four decisions made during registration determine whether the domain stays under your control for years: whose name goes in the registrant details, whose account holds the domain, how long the registration term runs and how it renews, and which security settings are switched
Registering a Domain Name: A Checklist for Your Online Identity Read More »
Domain names and top-level domains are two levels of one addressing system. A domain name such as www.example.com is a string of labels separated by dots, and each label is a step down a hierarchy that starts at an unnamed root, passes through a top-level domain such as .com, and ends at the name of
Domain Names and Top-Level Domains: How Internet Addressing Works Read More »
To protect your domain name, you need to control three things: the registrar account where the domain is registered, the email address that account uses, and the renewal date. If an outsider gains the first two, they can take the domain; if you miss the third, the domain can lapse and be registered by someone
Protect Your Domain Name: A Beginner’s Guide to Keeping It Safe Read More »
Once you have a list of domain name ideas for a website, the best one is usually the name that passes five practical tests: it is short, it has one obvious spelling, it does not conflict with anyone’s trademark, it uses an extension your audience trusts, and, if it was registered before, its history is
Domain Name Ideas for a Website: How to Choose the Right One Read More »
To transfer a domain name to a new registrar, confirm the domain is eligible to move, copy its DNS settings, make sure the contact email on the registration is one you can read, unlock the domain at your current registrar, and request its authorization code. Then start the transfer at the new registrar, enter the
How to Transfer a Domain Name: A Step-by-Step Guide Read More »
The fastest way to learn domain names is to take the subject in the order a domain actually lives: first what a domain name is, then how its parts and the companies behind it fit together, then how it is registered and owned, how it is pointed at a website and email, and finally how
Learn Domain Names: A Learning Path Through Website Addresses Read More »
The most reliable way to generate unique domain name ideas for your business website is to separate the work into two stages: first produce a long list of candidates using several different naming methods, then evaluate and narrow that list. Most people do the opposite. They think of one name, find that it is already
How to Generate Unique Domain Name Ideas for Your Business Website Read More »
Safeguarding your online brand means protecting the names, domains and accounts that customers use to recognize you, so that nobody else can use them to deceive those customers. Brand abuse damages reputation and customer trust in a specific way: a customer who is cheated by a fake website, a phishing email or a counterfeit seller
Protecting Your Online Brand, Reputation and Customer Trust Read More »
Domain name investing is the business of buying domain names in order to resell them, usually to a company that wants a particular name for its website or brand. Investors call it the digital real estate market because a good name, like a good street corner, is scarce and can be worth far more to
Domain Name Investing: How the Digital Real Estate Market Works Read More »
NameBlock is a domain name blocking service: it lets a business block a name, a brand or a keyword so that other people cannot register domain names containing it in participating extensions. Instead of registering and renewing every variation of a brand defensively, the owner places a block, and anyone who later searches for a
NameBlock: A Reliable Domain Name Blocking Service for Brand Security Read More »
You minimize the risk of having your domain name stolen by securing the registrar account that controls it, locking the name at the registry level, keeping the contact email on a separate domain that you renew, and checking the registration often enough that any change is noticed in hours rather than weeks. Domain theft is
Minimizing the Risk of Having Your Domain Name Stolen Read More »