A website with your name in the address, but not created by you. An almost perfect copy of your business website, on a domain that differs by one letter. A page that talks about you in an apparently neutral tone, but full of insinuations. These are all forms of impersonation through domains, and they have a particular effect on reputation: people searching your name tend to regard a site that has it in its address as authoritative.
The most common forms
The domain with your name
Someone registers firstnamelastname.com, or a variant with another extension, and uses it to publish content about you. It may be an attempt to sell it back, a way to discredit you or a site pretending to be yours.
The clone site
The website of a business or professional is copied, with its design, text and photos, and published on a similar domain. The aim is often financial: collecting payments, data or contacts from customers who believe they are dealing with you.
The "almost identical" domain
Swapped letters, an extra hyphen, an "l" instead of an "i", a different extension. These domains are designed to deceive people who type in a hurry or glance carelessly at a link.
How to notice
Besides periodically monitoring your name on search engines, a few signs deserve attention:
- customers saying they wrote to you at an email address you do not recognise;
- expected payments that never arrive because they went elsewhere;
- search results for your name leading to unfamiliar sites;
- copies of your text or photos found by searching for a distinctive sentence from your site.
This last check is simple: take an original, fairly long sentence from your site, put it in quotation marks and search for it. If it appears on other domains, you have found a copy.
Gathering information
Before acting, document the site with screenshots of the main pages, always with the address bar visible. Then note:
- the exact domain and the pages where the problematic content appears;
- who registered it, if public: it is often hidden by privacy services, but the name of the registrar, the company with which the domain was registered, is always shown in public records;
- who hosts it, meaning the hosting provider, which can be found with freely available lookup tools;
- what the site does: publishes defamatory content, poses as you, collects payments, copies your text.
The possible routes
| Situation | Whom to contact |
|---|---|
| The site collects payments or data pretending to be you | Hosting provider and registrar, flagging fraud; the police |
| It copies text and photos from your site | Hosting provider, with a copyright takedown request |
| It publishes defamatory content | Hosting provider, search engines, a lawyer |
| It uses a registered trademark that belongs to you | Domain name dispute procedures, through a lawyer |
Contacting the hosting provider and registrar
Almost all hosting providers and registrars have an address or form dedicated to abuse. Write a short, precise message: which domain, which pages, which violation and what evidence you are attaching. A site used for fraud or impersonation has a good chance of being suspended, because it breaches the terms of service of almost every provider.
Copyright
If the clone site copies text, photos or design that you created, you can request removal for copyright infringement. This is often the fastest route, because the infringement is easy to prove: you just show the original.
Domain name procedures
If you own a registered trademark and someone has registered, in bad faith, an identical or confusingly similar domain, there are administrative procedures that can lead to the domain being transferred. They require you to show your right to the name, the registrant's lack of legitimate interest and bad faith. These are technical procedures best handled with a professional.
Prevention
- Register the domain with your first and last name in the main extensions, even if you do not use it right away.
- If you run a business, consider registering the most obvious variants of its name too.
- State on your official website which are your only contact and payment channels.
- Renew domains in good time: an expired domain can be registered by anyone.
In short
- A domain with your name looks authoritative, which makes it an effective impersonation tool.
- Periodically search for original sentences from your site to discover copies.
- Document the site and identify the registrar and hosting provider before acting.
- Abuse notices and copyright takedown requests are often the quickest routes.
- Register domains with your name early and renew them before they expire.