Unfortunately, identity theft is no longer exclusive to people. Even brands’ identities can be stolen and misused by criminals. Online brand abuse is becoming an increasingly popular form of cybercrime. As a business owner, you need to know how to prevent this and what to do should it happen to you. This article will tell you what you can do to handle this situation.
What Is Online Brand Abuse?
Online brand abuse can take on many forms. It can range from brand impersonation, domain name abuse, and other ways of using the name of your brand. This can negatively impact your reputation and put your finances at risk.
One classic example of brand abuse is counterfeiting or making fake products and then falsifying your brand to sell these items. If you want to prevent this from happening to you, here are some preventative methods you can explore:
1: Make an Official Presence Online
If you have multiple accounts on social media, make them official if you can. People can verify your official social media accounts because of the verified badge that appears on your pages. This badge can prevent brand fraud.
Verification depends on the social media platform, but it usually involves requesting a blue verification badge and explaining why you need verification. Then you must wait until you get approved or declined. Usually, they would ask you to upload some proof of ownership of the brand.
2: Keep on Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation
One of the most effective ways to ensure that everything is under control is through proper and consistent monitoring. Look for pages online that impersonate your brand. Creating pages on social media is unfortunately quite easy, so it would not be a surprise if you see fake pages spreading fake news about your brand.
By having a dedicated team on the lookout for things like that, you can immediately take action should you find evidence of fraud.
3: Do Your Research
This step should be done as early as before you launch your online social media presence, but if you fail to do that at the beginning, you can always do the research now.
You need to be aware of the type of crimes happening on social media today and how online criminals commit them. More importantly, you must develop ways to mitigate such acts and the possible solutions.
4: Keep Employees Informed
The fastest way you can prevent and police further online criminal activity against you is by educating your employees about it. In addition to that, develop a clear boundary of what they can and cannot do on your social pages. That can limit the potential harm. You can also start a monitoring team internally or hire professional ones externally.
Not being aware of these can be used by online criminals to damage your reputation and more. The most important thing to do is to take action to prevent such online crimes from happening. Know where they can begin, identify steps to prevent them, and find solutions in case they happen. Teach your people how to use your brand’s social media responsibly and be extra careful when dealing with people online.
Prevent brand abuse. FraudWatch International can protect you from experiencing online brand abuse, counterfeit brands, and bad brand impersonation by assessing and addressing brand abuse. As your authorized agents, we will do our best through our Brand Abuse service.