Here are some facts about companies (especially small to mid-size companies): there’s usually nobody in the office who knows a damn thing about the brand protection elements of internet marketing.  These days, you’ll probably find a graphic designer who does minor website graphics here and there, and maybe an SEM guy who does AdWords, but nobody who really knows what the hell they’re talking about in regard to advanced brand integrity, domaining or anything of that nature.

Good cybersquatters know this. I’m also convinced at this point in time that the best cybersquatters on earth do not exist in the United States, but elsewhere. You’d be a fool to cybersquat in the US, it’s probably the most difficult country to do it and get away with it.

Corporate Weaknesses that Cybersquatters Exploit

Here are two of the biggest vulnerabilities I’ve seen in my career in small to mid-size businesses, in regard to protecting the brand name (more specifically, domain names) online:

1. Nobody’s educated about cybersquatting: That’s right, upper management usually doesn’t understand the point of owning the .com of your brand name. They only thought about the actual company name. They don’t know that cybersquatters go for misspellings, plural versions and other variants to capitalize on type-in traffic. Oh, and they don’t know what type-in traffic means, either. They know so little about the world of cybersquatting that they wouldn’t even know to say “let’s hire a guy who knows about this stuff.”
2. Nobody’s willing to spend thousands to sue someone over a cybersquatting case: What I’m  about to say is so true — companies tend to send cease and desist letters as empty threats that will never be acted upon. I’ve heard corporate counsel say “we’ll send the letter, but I’m not spending $15k to take someone to court over a domain name.” I’ve heard it MANY times, actually. To a bigger extreme, most small-mid size companies don’t own an international trademark and won’t even touch an international cybersquatting case with a ten foot pole.

With that being said, the two things cybersquatters have going for them are 1) misinformation, and 2) the cost and time involved in the court process, which is enough to scare most people away. In essence, cybersquatters are like great Texas Hold ‘Em players – the call the bluff of any cease & desist that comes their way. The occasional squatter sitting in his mother’s basement will cave in to a C&D, but many won’t fall for it.

The best thing any ‘web guru’ (God, I hate that term) working for a company can do is to spend a good day or so typing in domains based on their company’s name, brand names and variants, and buy all of the major .com versions right away so that they’re in the company’s possession. Don’t forget the “CompanyNameSucks.com” version, too.  If your company runs franchises, be sure to start working on an internet policy that restricts franchisees from doing certain things (like registering domains without your approval). If you don’t take these actions, a cybersquatter will.

Carelessness in Domaining Can Hurt

The worst case scenario I’ve ever seen was for a multi-national, $600 million company who didn’t even own the .net domain name to their own one-word company name. It was registered in the earlier half of the 2000’s by a cybersquatter in South Korea, who is still running a parked page on it. Given that the .com site was pulling in about 7,500 uniques per day and is a popular international brand name, there’s no doubt the .net was getting some healthy type-ins.

Here are all of the aforementioned elements coming into play that I mentioned before: 1) nobody knew/cared to do anything about it in time, 2) nobody is willing to pursue this in court, 3) it’s international, so, the Korean legal team would have to go after it, and nobody is even willing to reach out to them and request this.

Cybersquatter 1, Big Corporation 0.

I could rattle off a whole bunch of other scenarios I’ve seen: plural domains, common exact-word misspelling .com’s, .ca’s, etc. – running on parked pages, with or without a “this domain is for sale” link at the top…all of which were careless, stupid and easily avoidable issues, even in the early 2000s. However, the cybersquatters who are still benefiting to this moment are having a field day.

Many other huge corporations still sit back oblivious to their cybersquatted trademarked names, benefiting someone else’s monthly payroll. Which companies are on the ball, and which aren’t? Maybe Rolex is up on these shenanigans, but how about Invicta? Maybe John Deere knows about cybersquatting, but what about Toro?  Cybersquatters do their due diligence, even if these companies don’t.

This is why cybersquatting is still alive. Smart squatters don’t go after god-like organizations like Microsoft, Dell, or Disney; they’re going after the ones who probably have an internal weakness, or no system in place that has enough of a backbone to do anything about it. Just like the way hackers find a weakness to exploit, so do cybersquatters.  With that being said – to be a good cybersquatter, you have to be a good risk-taker. You’d have to know which companies would probably never pursue you in court. You’d be the kind of person who would let a 30 day term on a C&D letter go by, and wait for the next move (if any).

It’s important to note that Twitter has no tolerance of people who claim usernames for the sake of hoarding them, never using them, using them to spam others, claiming them for blackmail, or claiming them to eventually sell them off on a private market. There’s a whole sub-section of their terms of service in regard to Twitter username socialsquatting. If you’ve wanted a Twitter account badly and intend to really make it great but some scum has already taken the account name and has obviously done nothing with it, then you’ve got a prime candidate for sending a complaint to Twitter over.

Reporting a Twitter Squatter

If the Twitter account you’re wanting has nothing but spam links (such as “check this out!” with a Bit.ly link, it’s most likely affiliate marketing spam), report the account as spam. You might not be able to nail the guy for cybersquatting, even though he’s probably being active on a regular basis just to hold on to the name, but you can at least get him suspended for spamming.

If anyone has ever tried to blackmail you by registering your company name as a Twitter address, be sure to report it, and they will get a perma-ban by Twitter. Nice.

Now that all of the scenarios are out of the way, here’s how you can actually submit the complaint. Twitter doesn’t make the process very straightforward, and it can be a real pain to figure out how to report someone for squatting. If you need to do so, visit the “Submit a Request” form. The options for the form are rather ridiculous – you should select “I have a bone to pick with you” and “inactive username” or “trademark/brand cybersquatting.” Then, state the @username that is being squatted, and mention how there is no activity on the account. Twitter should be able to handle the request.

Suspended Twitter accounts go into limbo...sometimes forever!

There are three possible scenarios that may come from this: 1) Nothing happens (doubtful, since Twitter is more aggressive than ever with socialsquatters), 2) The username gets deleted and locked (bummer…now nobody can use it), 3), The user is deleted, and the username goes back up for dibs (be sure to check every day so that you can be the one to snag it!)

Twitter usernames that are suspended go back up for grabs in 60 days, or so they say.

Even if you find names that you don’t care about claiming, be sure to report them anyway. Do it for your fellow community. Don’t let these jerks get away with it!

In past articles, I’ve spoken about the bastards that are known as cybersquatters, and how they not only go after domain names that either are exact to or similar to an existing company name. I’ve also ranted about their little bastard cousins known as “socialsquatters” who perform the same acts with user names on social networking accounts. One of the most devastating social networking account user names to not own as your exact company name is Youtube; therefore, I stress the importance of getting the account name back on any of your businesses that will be doing video promotions.

Contacting Youtube to Report a Squatter

Much like contacting Google, it’s really hard to figure out how to contact Youtube. They make you jump through hoops if you click the “contact” link. In short, you’ll never find it through there (believe me, I’ve tried for a half hour once) – you’ll just get dragged through pages and pages of FAQs and other nonsense. If you’re looking to dispute a cybersquatter that has registered Youtube.com/YourName, you’ll have to do it through the Youtube Legal Issues Form. As the form says, this is the best way to file a claim; better than doing so by snail mail or fax.

Click through two descriptive pages, then click “trademark” from the link list, and you’ll get to the form itself. Here, you’ll have to fill out the trademark owner’s name (hopefully, that’s you), address and contact information, along with the ID# of your registered trademark. When describing the issue at hand, you’ll really want to play up the fact that this name has been intentionally cybersquatted. Mention your company’s life span. Hopefully your company has been around before the cybersquatter took your user name…otherwise, you might run into a roadblock. State the date that your trademark was registered, and when it was first used in commerce. Explain that this account is causing “commercial confusion” with the public. In other words, people are assuming the account in question is the official Youtube account of your company, when it is not.

At the end of the form, be sure to state that you want the account to be closed AND handed over to you. Otherwise, it will be gone forever, and that defeats the purpose.

If Youtube reviews everything and it all checks out, you’ll receive an email stating that the account has successfully been transferred and a temporary password has been assigned. This is the part where you can start doing the Cabbage Patch.

Above: The email confirming Youtube's transferal of a cybersquatted account to me.

The more of these things you have on your side, the better your chances of getting your username back will be:

• You own the registered trademark of the word, and it’s a “made-up” word (i.e., ‘Flarg’ instead of ‘MotorcycleVideos’)
• The socialsquatter hasn’t done anything with the account beyond registering the user name, making it blatantly obvious that the intent was to squat it
• The account you’re trying to gain ownership of was squatted a long time ago, and the account has no activity on it in months or years

What If You Don’t Own a Registered Trademark?

If none of this was helpful to you because you only have a lowly “implied trademark,” it’s never too late to register a trademark for your online presence. Seriously, the benefits far outweigh that $500 fee, especially when fighting these cybersquatting pricks! It’s really easy to do, too. I did it on my own, but services like Legalzoom’s online trademark service will do all of the grunt work for you.

If the Youtube username you desire has been taken by a squatter, or someone who registered it years ago and has never logged in since then, you’re out of luck. Youtube never releases squatted or suspended usernames – EVER…even though they claim that it happens within 6 months of the action taken. The only way to get one is to register a trademark, be patient through the registration process (usually 1 full year) and attempt to write Youtube using your trademark serial number as your saving grace.

Otherwise, you can always resort to “Youtube.com/mysitedotcom” (note the “dot com” spelled out at the end), I’ll promise not to make fun of you, though.

Possibly the worst move I ever made (or didn’t make) was securing a couple of my well-established brand name’s usernames on Youtube. Getting a good username on Youtube is nearly impossible these days. If you have low blood pressure, please don’t even attempt it. I can honestly find an available premium .com domain name faster than I can find a decent, brandable Youtube username. Getting back to it, some scum sucker registered my trademarked brand name as a Youtube account – one of which I want to be in my possession SO badly. The account has been inactive for well over a year and a half.

How Big Business Fights Socialsquatting

I’ve worked with corporate legal departments at past jobs to gain possession of a cybersquatted social networking accounts. It always helps to be a “big business” with an official letter that came from someone who has the tag “Corporate Counsel” after his or her name. Basically, you can send these social networking companies a dispute, stating that someone has “cybersquatted” (be sure to use that word) your company’s registered trademark with the intention of benefiting from your company’s popularity. It helps if the account you’re looking to gain control of actually has something related to your business category within it, which will make your complaint more concrete. Include your company name and/or registered trademark S/N identification (the registered trademark will count much more than an un-protected company name that has been used in commerce). Send out this quasi-C&D letter and hope for the best. If you get no reply, try a follow-up. If that doesn’t work, then you’re SOL.

How to Combat Socialsquatting On Your Own

What to do? Here’s my suggestion: be on top of every social network that comes out. If you don’t read RSS feeds from companies like Mashable or Search Engine Land, start doing so immediately. Mashable.com in particular gives featured promos on start-up social networking services, basically introducing them to the internet marketing public. You never know which one of them will  be the next Twitter, Tumblr or FriendFeed, and you’ll want to register your brand name on them immediately before someone else gets to it first, even if they wind up being failed projects. If anything, include a link to your home page from your account on these sites – it will only help you to continue ranking high for your own company name. The best and easiest way to see which usernames are available on social networking accounts is to use NameChk or KnowEm, both of which will scan dozens of sites at once and let you know which sites have that username as an availability.

As for Facebook…if you’re a business owner, it’s in your best interest to start a Facebook Page for your company, amass exactly 25 fans or more, and unlock the ability to name your page. Name it for the exact name of your company or brand name (hopefully it is still available). Facebook continues to be the only social network that makes you jump through hoops to register a branded URL (unless you own a registered trademark for it, in which case, you go immediately to the front of the line and/or will have any existing page for it be surrendered over to you).

Twitter has wizened up to socialsquatters recently. Don’t even think about socialsquatting an actual brand name: there’s an algorithm for that. Or, some kind soul will defend a brand and simply report you, prompting your ban from Twitter altogether.

Owning the exact name of your company/brand as a social network username is key. It’s a must-have. It’s something everyone will expect you to own…otherwise, you’ll resort to looking like a horse’s ass, with an “alternate version” username that most people will not remember (like Twitter.com/mysitedotcom – boo hoo). Think smart by acting fast – cybersquatters and socialsquatters have no life beyond chasing delusions and thinking they’ll get big bucks for owning top brand-name accounts. It’s easy to combat a cybersquatter in your homeland (send off a C&D to the server host), but a socialsquatter is truly someone who will ruin your day, and your branding campaign.