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Comments: 184 +- Your Rights Online: FreeCreditReport.com Wins 1,017 Domains By UDRP on Friday November 13, @06:11PM
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typosquatting writes to mention that the largest domain dispute case since the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was enacted ten years ago has been decided. The decision saw 1,017 cyber-squatting domains turned over to ConsumerInfo.com, owner of FreeCreditReport.com. The full decision can be read via the National Arbitration Forum website. "It would seem that this decision sets or reinforces a fairly strong precedent that trademark holders may be entitled to, not only to the domain name that exactly matches their trademark, but also to a wide swath of other domain names including nearly every possible misspelling or other variation of that trademark, potentially even if the trademark is comprised of generic words."
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This is gthe only real answer (Score:5, Insightful)
to solve the important dilemma of people not wanting to be responsible for typing correctly.
Jeez this is so stupid.
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Re:This is gthe only real answer (Score:5, Funny)
No, some people ham-fist addressesd. You'll be tpying laong and hit teh wring button or forget if it was an underscore or a dash. THen where will you go? You don't know, and that's what a lot of scammers have been making money witj for a long tim.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Liar beats other liars? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny that "free"creditreport.com is upset that someone else is profiting off their name, when their name is designed to profit off someone else's. I don't think they existed before the US government mandated the credit agencies give you a free copy of your credit report every year (via annualcreditreport.com). "free"creditreport.com doesn't actually give you a credit report for free; you have to enroll in a reporting service to get it.
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Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Informative)
Don't get me wrong though, it was kind of neat getting real time credit scores on your account, an email alert every time some yahoo looked at your report, and access to a one click instant credit lock. But in the end, unless your going to buy a house or a car you don't really need up to the second data on your report.
Though, to be honest, I think we should be given access, atleast once a month rather than once a year. Its not like the data is that hard to display and it be far more useful to check for credit card fraud.
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Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:4, Funny)
I fell for the catchy jingle.
It's OK to admit it.
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Re: (Score:2)
When you check your credit too often, it dings your credit score. And it doesn't take much either.
Don't ask me why this is the case...
Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. Applying for new lines of credit will lower your score, but checking it yourself will not. See http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs6c-CreditScores.htm#5 [privacyrights.org]
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Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't ask me why this is the case...
Because - as I have recently found after starting a job here - the American banking system is utterly insane.
I can't believe you people still use cheques, for fuck's sake. And that even with a 6 figure income you're looking at 6-12 months of "credit building" before you can qualify for a cheap car loan without being raped on interest rates.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't use cheques, we use checks. I don't particularly care that you need to re-enforce the differences our languages have developed over the years, most of us are aware that we spell somethings different just so its clear we are NOT YOU. Get over yourself.
You're the only person here who feels the need to "re-enforce the differences". I write it that way because that's the way I've been writing it for thirty years.
I bought my first car with a low interest rate and the car cost more than half my year
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In many places, a chip-and-PIN credit card gives up the "stolen card" protection I'm used to, on the blatent falsehood that someone couldn't use your stolen card unless you told them the PIN.
And there's always a rationalization for living beyond your means, but very few legitimate reasons to get a car loan. The only exception I can see is if you're a taxi driver buying your cab (or owner/operator of a comercial truck or etc) where it's really a small-business loan. Don't have much cash? Drive a crapwagon
Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Informative)
Tip: There are three credit agencies. You can check each one once a year for free. Check a different one every four months ...
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let us not forget that the majority of these sites are owned by the credit reporting agencies themselves. They have set up a system of credit reporting that is so ridiculously flawed security wise that they can now sell the people "protection" from the very same system. Good business to be in...
Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
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Denied? You get a free credit report (Score:3, Informative)
This is data that is used to deny you bank loans
When a U.S. lender uses a credit report to deny you a loan, you have the right under the FCRA to know which bureau the lender used, so you can get a copy of your credit report yourself.
Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
What, you think the purpose of a credit file is to serve the borrower?
Credit scores and credit reports are for lenders. Why would they fine themselves for incorrectly reporting your credit history? The system is broken not because there is inadequate oversight or accountability regarding lending and reporting practices (though it is obviously grossly inadequate). The system is broken because it is designed from its very foundations to ensure that no matter what, lenders always come out on top. This is why fraud is not more aggressively pursued, and why incorrect reporting is shrugged off as a necessary part of doing business. The free-market mentality is that the only mechanism required to ensure correct reporting is the loss of revenue due to competitors valuation of lending risk being more accurate than one's own. And of course, the consumer is the one who always gets shafted under this system.
Credit reports are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are a necessary aspect of determining credit risk. On the other hand, they are used these days to evaluate far more than one's creditworthiness--and they do so using very personal and specific data about you, information that you would think ought to be your right to know whether they are being used for or against you. The system is corrupt because it is being increasingly applied to aspects of one's life far beyond what was originally intended, yet the borrower is really the only party who truly cares about the accuracy of the data it contains.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, no, no, absolutely not!
It does not always work.
Look up:
Moral hazard problem
Coase theorem (negative externalities in an unowned resource, e.g. the air/environment)
Those two things should be enough to show that the free market doesn't always work. And, of course, there's the problem with monopolies as you said.
Re:Liar beats other liars? Mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
... and it be far more useful to check for credit card fraud.
Precisely, and that's exactly what the Big Three don't want. If people started checking their credit record at will, and as a matter ordinary household economics, the credit bureaus would be under a lot more pressure to clean up their respective acts. That will cost them lots of money, and they're perfectly happy that 'x" number of us get screwed out of our savings and our credit every year. Otherwise, they would have to actually fix the broken system they've built. There's no incentive whatsoever for them to treat us decently in this respect, mainly because there's no downside to them if we get shafted. Congress, of course, could fix that very easily with effective regulation and enforcement, but it's unlikely that will ever come to pass ... too many billions (of our money) on the line.
Furthermore, the corporations that depend upon the credit system (banks and credit-card issuers, for example) want millions of people who don't understand the system, don't understand how to improve their score, or what affects it. That way they can keep milking those people with high interest rates, late charges, and so forth. It's no small potatoes, my friend.
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Re: (Score:2)
I am surprised that they themselves aren't considered domain squatters on "creditreport.com" -- if they argue that howtogetafreecreditreport.com is infringing on freecreditreport.com, I can't think of why they aren't infringing on creditreport.com
Even more so considering that they have paid Google for a sponsored link when someone searches for "creditreport.com".
Re:Liar beats other liars? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The FTC didn't set it up. The big three set it up to comply with the FACT Act (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act). Although I agree that a .gov would have been much more apropos.
freecreditreport.com sucks ass. (Score:5, Informative)
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Really horrible (Score:3, Insightful)
There are millions of people in the world with the same name. If I want a web site in my name, and someone else has it, I have to wait for them to die before I can have a site with my name on it. Unlike license plates where I can put up -01 or -02 or whatever, I can't do that now (oh noes, its too close). This is really really dumb. If you've ever tried to find someone on Facebook and has to go through ten pages of people with the same name, you know what I mean.
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Re:Really horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you're called "freecreditreport" I don't see how this affects you.
IANAL but if your name is JohnSmith and you register JohnSmithsPage.com, and end up being sued by John Smith's Brewery [wikipedia.org], you'd have a fair crack at defending your page. Especially if you put "This page is not associated with John Smith's Brewery in any way" somewhere on your page.
However if your page contains trash talk about John Smith's Brewery, or is obviously trying to fool people into thinking their at John Smith's Brewery's official site, you'd have a harder time convincing a judge. FOR example, check out this site [nissan.com], which still manages to hang on to its domain name despite having the force of a VERY LARGE company's legal army against it.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How is talking trash fooling people into thinking your that site?
It's not. I made two separate points. But you're going to have a hard time getting sympathy from a judge if you're obviously antagonizing the other site owner.
Re: (Score:2)
I call BS.
The whole issue with trademarks is whether a name is confusingly similar. Seems pretty clear to me that certain parties are trying to leech off a valid trademark holders name by registering common misspellings which would certainly meet the "confusingly similar" test.
There is no equivalence between your example of common name domains JohnDoe.com and a real trademark CocaCola.com, or freecreditreport.com in this case.
Doesn't seem unfair to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not really agree that domains that only bear similarity to a mark should be transferred, but in this case, they are part of a large collection of domains that appear to be very obviously registered in bad faith, with the sole intention of typosquatting.
I wonder if the registrant paid for those domains... this should have set him back at least $5k.
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"..with the sole intention of typosquatting."
to which I say: so what?
Sets a precedant (Score:2, Insightful)
It would seem that this decision sets or reinforces a fairly strong precedent that trademark holders may be entitled to, not only to the domain name that exactly matches their trademark, but also to a wide swath of other domain names including nearly every possible misspelling or other variation of that trademark, potentially even if the trademark is comprised of generic words.
Does it? It strikes me that FreeCreditReport variants have more potential to defraud regular people than your regular news site. If slashdot tried to do the same thing, and pick up all of the .coms, .nets, etc on its variants, it would probably be shot down. It would be a bit nice if this precendent was viewed in context as an exception where the public would benefit from not having ambiguous urls over the corporate entity actually owning the urls.
use annualcreditreport.com instead (Score:5, Informative)
FreeCreditReport.com charges $15 and is run by lying, typo-squatting douches at Experian [google.com].
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The reporting agencies directly:
http://www.transunion.com/ [transunion.com]
http://www.equifax.com/home/en_us [equifax.com]
http://www.experian.com/ [experian.com]
Precedent against Google? (Score:2)
Right now Larry Page and Sergey Brin are yelling at each other over their diamond-encrusted platinum iPhones. On the bright side this guy claims that Google earns $32M-50M on typosquatting. That's the sort of cash they could easily walk away:
http://www.itworld.com/internet/56426/professor-google-earns-32-50m-typosquatting-sites [itworld.com]
A battle between two evil companies (Score:4, Interesting)
... means squat.
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Re: (Score:2)
When Godzilla and monster X fight, it's the people who pay.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Reading the article... (Score:5, Funny)
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Reasons FTA.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In one or more of the following ways
(1) adding "ing," changing the tense of the mark to a present participle;
(2) adding the letter "s," changing the mark from singular to plural;
(3) adding a generic or descriptive word to the mark;
(4) adding a generic or descriptive word to the mark that has an obvious association with Complainant's business;
(5) adding an abbreviation of a geographic word to the mark; (6) adding a geographic word to the mark;
(7) misspelling the mark by changing a letter in the mark to a different letter;
(8) misspelling the mark by changing a letter in the mark to a number;
(9) misspelling the mark by adding a letter within the mark;
(10) adding a letter to the beginning or end of the mark;
(11) misspelling the mark by adding a number within the mark;
(12) adding a number to the beginning or end of the mark;
(13) omitting the period between the first-level domain, "www," and the mark;
(14) changing the generic top-level domain (gTLD) included in the mark from ".com" to ".org;" and/or
(15) adding hyphens to the mark. Any individual disputed domain name typically contains Complainant's mark and one of these changes.
I'm glad they won. The showed plenty of examples of other companies that also won b/c of squatters like Bank Of America vs wwwbankofamerica.com (squatter removed the ".").
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Re:Reasons FTA.. (Score:4, Interesting)
One could argue that Bank of America opens themselves up to typosquatters by using www.bankofamerica.com instead of their old and easier typed domain, bofa.com
I notice that Barnes & Noble too wants users to type www.barnesandnoble.com instead of bn.com
No, it doesn't make the typosquatters any more right, but I think one is justified in also blaming stupidmarketingdirectors@companieswithverylongdomainnames.com
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
These domain names are usually used because they're easier to *say* than shorthand versions.
I used to think exactly the same way as you, but then I worked at a radio station for a year. Some of those short names can be quite easily misunderstood - letters are notoriously confusable. That's why there's a radio phonetic alphabet.
Freecreditreport.com is a criminal scam (Score:5, Informative)
The New York Times recently did an extensive article on this scam [nytimes.com].
The entire basis of their operation is to fool people into paying for something advertised as free. They claim that their site discloses its fees, but the disclosure is still discrete enough to fool massive numbers of people.
Any site where you make a purchase should disclose the fact that you are making a purchase with at least the level of clarity that you encounter on a reputable site such as Amazon.com. Also a service that advertises itself as "free" should never be allowed to charge -- even if they gratuitously disclosed their fee (which they don't) it would still be a bait an switch scam.
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Re:Freecreditreport.com is a criminal scam (Score:5, Interesting)
But its even deeper than this. Freecreditreport leeches off an even bigger scam. The whole premise that people allow, expect and pay these three companies to collect and sell their own information back to others is a intrinsically a scam.
The "big three" do not see or treat consumers as their customers - which explains why they are so difficult to deal with: their customers are other companies that buy information about the "worthiness" of potential customers, like you.
The absurd and unfair treatment that people received from these private companies was so bad that the laws were changed to require them to provide some information back to the unwilling subjects of their profits.
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Re:Freecreditreport.com is a criminal scam (Score:4, Informative)
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Its's a ripoff of "annualcreditreport.com". (Score:5, Informative)
FreeCreditReport is a ripoff of AnnualCreditReport.com [annualcreditreport.com], the real free site which the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires the three major credit bureaus to maintain at their expense.
"ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. and Freecreditreport.com are not affiliated with the annual free credit report program. Under a new Federal law, you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies. To request your free annual report under that law, you must go to www.annualcreditreport.com."
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Erm (Score:3, Informative)
Has to be said : what exactly do you get "for free" from freecreditreport.com? You can't get any information without paying and signing up for a service that you have to beg the phone reps to get canceled. Scarier still, the company that runs the site has the power to truly screw you over if you contest the charges on your credit card, since they ARE one of the credit reporting companies.
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slashdot has been trolled. (Score:5, Informative)
The submitter's name is "typosquatting." The linked article was written by Alias Encore's PR flack , and exists for the sole purpose of selling Alias-Encore's software and services-- namely "helping companies increase highly qualified traffic to their websites through the strategic acquisition of misspelled domain names."
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Credit is fascism (Score:4, Insightful)
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FCR.c Is a Total Scam (Score:3, Informative)
FreeCreditReport.com is a total scam. It's not free - you have to pay to get the report. But everyone's entitled to a free credit report once a year anyway, direct from the reporting corps, under US credit laws.
And now that scam has funded this evil precedent.
Goddamn the lawyers.
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Only a concern for the American Empire wage slave (Score:3, Funny)
That worthless bullshit garbage means NOTHING outside the borders of the Empire.
Seriously, you can rack up tens of thousands in debt and just bounce to another country and get citizenship there leaving your silly social number and all that Imperial rabid consumerism as you get a new ID/identity for your new citizenship. All your three Master's can do then is cry into their platinum cups while sitting on their gold thrones on top of their titanium floors with embedded diamonds and pearls.
The only check you need is a reality check with this set of debt chains you Imperials so proudly wear for some asinine reason.
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DO NOT USE FREECREDITREPORT.COM (Score:3, Informative)
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