CERT-In Advisory CIAD-2008-29
Fraudulent emails in the context of Cybersquatting

Original issue date: June 12, 2008


Description

Cybersquatting is the practice of registering a brand as a domain name with the intent of profiting from it by selling it, usually to the brand owner. As long as the cybersquatter owns the domain name, the brand owner cannot register its own brand as a domain name. In this sense, the cybersquatter breaches the fundamental rights of the brand owner to use its brand.

Furthermore, after getting the registration for the domain name of a brand; it may be use in bad faith.

It is observed that different Indian organizations especially financial institutions; with Internet existence are in receipt of emails from different Domain Name Registrars mostly form China , HongKong and Taiwan . These emails are informing the respective Domain Name owners (who have already registered their brands) about the Domain Name registration requests received from third-party respondents for brands which belongs to them but in different countries or in different country code top level domain (ccTLD).

For example, a bank has registered its brand with “xyzbank.in”. Some Domain Name Registrar intimates the contact person of the brand organization that he has received domain name registration request by name such as xyzbank.com, xyzbank.co.in, xyzbank.tw, xyzbank.cn and xyzbank.hk etc which is most likely not registered by the brand owner.

Countermeasures

• Any individual or organization receiving such emails regarding the Domain registration should verify the authenticity of emails received.
  
  
• Verify if the Domain Name Registrar is authentic and authorized for respective domain name registration. For “.in” ccTLD (country code top level domain) NIXI (National Internet eXchange of India ) is authorized registry.
  • To verify the accredited registrars appointed by NIXI use the following link: http://registry.in/accredited_registrars/
  • NIXI has Dispute Resolution Process to resolve any dispute with respect to cybersquatting given at the following link: http://registry.in/policies/dispute_resolution/
    
    
• Report cybersquatting issues related to TLDs (Top Level Domains) like .com, .org, .net etc. and ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) other than “.in” to ICANN
  • ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, who is managing the assignment of domain names world over) is following a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP). According to this policy, most types of trademark-based domain-name disputes including cybersquatting must be resolved. The policy details can be obtained from the following link: http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm
  • Complaints under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) may be submitted to any approved dispute-resolution service provider listed at the following link: http://www.icann.org/dndr/udrp/approved-providers.htm

Disclaimer

The information provided herein is on "as is" basis, without warranty of any kind.

Contact Information

Phone: +91-11-24368572

Postal address

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In)
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
Electronics Niketan
6, C.G.O. Complex
New Delhi-110 003