TypoSquasher, new patent-pending technology that enables companies to monitor, protect and enforce proper use of their brand online, was announced recently by CitizenHawk, a leading provider of digital brand management solutions. The new product offers the possibility to reclaim millions in revenues lost to cybersquatters who are monetizing "typo" domain names through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, gambling, phishing schemes, pop-up ads, spyware, affiliate fraud and other spurious means.

    A large market has emerged for "typo" domain names that exploit and monetize accidental traffic at the brand holder's expense, with up to 20% of all hand-typed URLs being misspelled. This practice, known as typosquatting, is estimated to cost brand holders millions of dollars each year in lost revenues and affiliate fraud. Because brand holders have had few utilities to help them fight typosquatters, the problem has now raised to staggering proportions. CitizenHawk has uncovered over 10,000 typo domains on the Internet Retailer Top 50 online retail brands alone. For example, there are currently more than 400 fraudulent domains squatting on versions of Disney brands and over 600 domains squatting on misspellings of Craigslist.org.

    Graham MacRobie, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of CitizenHawk, stated: "Popular brands are under siege by typosquatters. "Online trademark infringement has become a very complex and pervasive problem, and there are now many different ways people can exploit a company's brand: from pay-per-click advertising on a typo domain, to affiliate fraud and click fraud, to phishing. It is impossible to keep ahead of these people unless you're armed with the right information. We developed TypoSquasher to empower trademark holders to protect their valuable assets from illegal exploitation."

    The new Web-based solution, TypoSquasher crawls the Web to search for possible misspellings of domain names, identifies instances of trademark infringement, shows how these sites are being monetized, sends notices of fraudulent activity to domain owners, interrupts the flow of money being paid to trademark infringers, and automates legal action to get fraudulent sites stopped for good. Rudimentary domain watch services provide just a  simple list of names. In addition TypoSquasher provides all of the information required to determine whether a site may be an infringement in one intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard - including such information as who owns the domain name and how they are monetizing it, as well as screenshots of the infringing sites. Brand holders can also outsource the entire process to CitizenHawk as part of the company's premium service.

Among the features of the program we can find:

- Tracking of domains through entire lifecycle: TypoSquasher offers case management capabilities to collect comments and actions about specific domains, and allows companies to manage collections of similar domains and classify them into different groupings for accelerated action
- Automation of take-down process: TypoSquasher allows companies to identify the monetization methods being used by typosquatters and send takedown letters to various monetization channels
- Powerful discovery tools: TypoSquasher searches and consolidates domains that are squatting on rightful trademark owner's domain, and collects and archives screenshots of infringing sites
- Acceleration of necessary legal action: TypoSquasher enables companies to gather evidence, consolidate cases of trademark infringement and create and file UDRP documents

For more information visit http://www.citizenhawk.com/