Website Hijacking Poses New Risks to Online Business

For businesses, having a web presence has become a fundamental part of success. Businesses, both large and small, can reach a broader audience and streamline the offering of sales and services through a well developed website. Having a polished website not only adds credibility to your business, but it helps build your brand as well. Unfortunately, the rapidly growing reach of the Internet, combined with the relatively inexpensive costs of access, has introduced an increasingly popular type of theft known as website hijacking. Website hijacking is a form of search engine index spamming where the spammer creates a copy of a popular website that shows content identical to the original website but redirects traffic to a malicious website instead. Website hijacking commonly results in the truncation of a website, leaving it looking unprofessional and unreadable. These hackers may also add unapproved links that lead to dangerous sites that have viruses or inappropriate content such as pornography. These redirects may also lead potential clients to innocent looking websites that trick them into downloading malicious programs that compromise both their security and their privacy.

Website hackers may hijack a website for a variety of reasons. They may do so in order to direct web surfers to sites that sell counterfeit goods, to inflate the traffic of their own sites for advertising revenue, or simply to amuse themselves and annoy you.

What is even more alarming is that sophisticated hackers now have the ability to hijack a website by exploiting a common type of computer security vulnerability known as cross-site scripting (XSS). Hackers that utilize this method can craft malicious scripts that fold their content in with the content of a legitimate page. After embedding their script, they can then gain access to sensitive information on a business website or even to the private information of a company’s customers.

Overall, the hijacking of your website can damage your brand, undermine your message, and frustrate your audience. Thus, savvy business owners and brand managers must be vigilant about protecting their sites and policing their marks. As the legal system has routinely held that it is the brand owner’s responsibility to protect their sites and brands, business owners and brand managers should routinely check their own web sites for malicious coding as well as patrol online search results and Internet directories to determine the standing and visibility of their marks. Remember to pay special attention to the domain and web address in your listings and confirm that your website properly populates in any pertinent search results. Do not underestimate the threat of website hijacking. Both Yahoo! and Google have been victims of it in the past. If you suspect that you are a victim of website hijacking, contact an expert immediately.

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Klemchuk LLP is an Intellectual Property (IP), Technology, Internet, and Business law firm located in Dallas, TX.  The firm offers comprehensive legal services including litigation and enforcement of all forms of IP as well as registration and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights.  The firm also provides a wide range of technology, Internet, e-commerce, and business services including business planning, formation, and financing, mergers and acquisitions, business litigation, data privacy, and domain name dispute resolution.  Additional information about the IP law firm and its IP law attorneys may be found at www.klemchuk.com.

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