The vocabulary of brand abuse
14 terms that come up constantly in takedown work, defined plainly and linked to the service that deals with each one. Written for the person who has just been handed a suspicious URL and needs to know what they are looking at.
Threats
Brand impersonation
Any use of a brand's name, logo or visual identity by someone unauthorised, in order to borrow the trust that brand has earned.
brand abuse · fake brand page
Combosquatting
Attaching a believable word to a brand name to produce a domain that looks like an official sub-service rather than a misspelling.
combo domain · brand + keyword domain
Counterfeit app
A mobile app carrying a brand's name and identity, published by someone else, usually to capture logins or payment details.
fake app · clone app · impersonation app
Executive impersonation
Impersonating a named senior employee to exploit the authority attached to their name rather than any technical weakness.
CEO fraud · VIP impersonation · whaling
Homoglyph attack
Substituting visually identical characters from another script so a fraudulent domain is indistinguishable from the real one on screen.
IDN homograph attack · lookalike characters
Phishing
A fraudulent page or message that imitates a trusted brand in order to capture credentials, payment details or one-time codes.
credential phishing · phishing page
Typosquatting
Registering domains that rely on predictable typing mistakes so traffic meant for a brand lands on someone else's site instead.
URL hijacking · typo domain
Takedown process
Abuse report
A formal complaint to a hosting provider, registrar or platform asking them to act on content that violates their own terms.
abuse complaint · abuse desk
Phishing kit
A packaged set of files that recreates a target's login page and ships the captured credentials to the operator.
phish kit · phishing toolkit
Takedown
The process of getting infringing or malicious content removed by the party that controls it, and confirming it is actually gone.
content removal · takedown request
Infrastructure
Domain registrar
The accredited company a domain is registered through, and usually the layer with the power to suspend it outright.
registrar abuse · domain suspension
WHOIS
The public record of who registered a domain, when, through which registrar, and which nameservers it points at.
RDAP · registration lookup
Legal instruments
DMCA notice
A copyright takedown notice under US law that obliges a qualifying service provider to remove the material or lose its liability shield.
DMCA takedown · section 512 notice
UDRP
An arbitration procedure for transferring or cancelling a domain registered in bad faith, used when abuse reports have failed.
domain name dispute · Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy