Believe it or not, this system was born out of crime! Somebody stole and copied page we managed.
Perpetrators copied trademarked images, texts, videos and whole style almost one to one and registered domain with similar name. After that started mail spam campaign using that company name, photos trying to get money from customers...
During our investigation we found two domains that they registered, one for their spam email campaing and one for domain they use as web page. However, we tried to investigate if there are other domains registered under the same name or number to include into accusation for NAKA . We could not get this details enywhere. Thus idea for reverse whois search was born.
What have we tried...
Short version... there is nothing you can do in short amount of time.
- Contact the police
As pointless as this sound, its the only thing you can really do. Report the incident to police or NAKA. Research the owners as much as you can and report your findings and make official accusation at unknown person and let the police search for them.
Than you can wait for very long time to somehow obtain court order which you can use to get the fraudulent page removed by hosting.
Also if the domain was registered by foreign web hosting, the accusation needs to go to that foreign country as well.. so good luck with that.
- Check who registered the domain
If you hoped to find the real identity of perpetrators you are out of luck, unless they are really stupid.
They probably registered the domain under false name and nobody actually checks if person registering the domain is real ( if they go through web hosting )
Common tactic is to register the domain under similar name as the official one.. like John Smith owns the original domain and the false is under Johhn Smith
- Contact web hosting where the web is hosted
Another waste of time...
You can explain, send them all valid documentation, provide trademark contracts, even point exactly where in their rules the fraudulent page is breaking them... they will mostly do nothing without court order.
They might contact the owners, but all they have to do is reply that they are not aware of anything wrong... and hosting is covered. Technically they can't decide, but would be nice to see them enforce at least their own rules.
- Make a statement on your page
Distance yourself and your company from the fake page.
Make a clear statement on your page that fake page exists, explain in short the situation, and include elements that can't be copied over. Because the perpetrators can copy your statement as well.. therefore it is good to include picture of SSL certificate.
This should be automatic, but if you are a company invest into proper SSL certificate with name of your company.. this cost something and criminals are usually cheap and won't pay for fake SSL certificate.
We needed a tool to solve crime that was not available, so we made it available for everybody.