Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, interviewed Kotryna Ragaisyte, Head of Content & Brand at Decodo, to spotlight a growing threat many businesses underestimate: digital squatting—fraudsters registering lookalike domains to impersonate brands, steal customers, and damage reputations.
Ragaisyte explained that Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) is a web data collection infrastructure provider offering proxy and scraping solutions—“the backbone of the businesses that need publicly available data” for functions like price comparison and information gathering. Her team encountered digital squatting firsthand when attackers registered a country-code domain using their former brand name, forcing them to confront how difficult it can be to shut down impersonators even when you discover the scam quickly.
The business impact, she said, is immediate and severe: reputational harm from fraudulent “service,” negative reviews, lost revenue, and significant legal and operational costs. “It impacts the whole business,” Ragaisyte noted, adding that fighting squatters becomes a cross-team crisis involving legal, marketing, customer support, and security—not a problem any one department can solve alone.
Ragaisyte tied the surge in squatting to the post-COVID acceleration of online commerce and habit-driven clicking behavior—warning that top search placement doesn’t guarantee legitimacy. She outlined why legal remedies can help but aren’t a silver bullet: disputes may require proof of bad faith, can take a long time, must often be handled case-by-case, and don’t stop future registrations. Her advice emphasized proactive defense—broad trademark coverage, building a robust domain portfolio beyond “.com” (including misspellings and country-code domains), and maintaining monitoring and internal readiness.
Finally, she stressed that response requires disciplined evidence gathering, fast coordination with registrars/hosting providers and legal counsel, and transparent customer communication. Rather than hoping the issue will “go away,” Ragaisyte urged brands to clearly publish official domains and warn customers across email and social channels so scams don’t define the narrative.
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