According to Cointelegraph: With an agenda to curb potential scams, investment giant BlackRock has initiated legal actions against a variety of 'typosquatting' websites and fraudulent domains, some of which are related to crypto, for misusing its brand name intentionally.
On October 10, BlackRock filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against the owners of 44 internet domain names. These domains included keywords such as 'BlackRock', 'Aladdin', 'Crypto', 'Capital', and 'Investments', and were registered, according to BlackRock, to profit from consumer confusion, run pay-per-click advertisements, malware, and conduct email phishing attacks.
Terming the practice as 'typosquatting', wherein a domain is registered as a typographical error of a legitimate site, the asset manager accused these entities of violating the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act through domain registration similar to its own.
The contested domain names include cryptocurrency-related ones such as 'blackrock-crypto dot net' and 'crypto-blackrock dot com'. While some of these domains were non-functional, others reportedly offered services such as web design.
BlackRock sought domain registration data from the publicly available Whois database in its effort to identify the owners and is seeking the transfer of these domains under its control. The firm also demands damages and injunctions against further cybersquatting and infringement of its trademarks, including 'BLACKROCK', 'ALADDIN', and 'BLK'.
Fake domains, including such copycat names, have previously been associated with scams or malware dissemination. They often take advantage of ad providers like Google and Facebook to drive traffic to these fraudulent sites.
