Facebook Sues Namecheap For Letting Scammers Register Lookalike Domains

Facebook filed a lawsuit this week against Namecheap, claiming the domain name registrar has refused to cooperate in an investigation into a series of malicious domains that have been registered through its service and which impersonated the Facebook brand. ZDNet reports: Christen Dubois, Director and Associate General Counsel at Facebook, said today that Facebook engineers tracked down 45 suspicious Facebook lookalike domains registered through Namecheap, which had the owners’ details hidden through the company’s WhoisGuard side-service. Some of the sample domains included the likes of instagrambusinesshelp.com, facebo0k-login.com, and whatsappdownload.site. Dubois said lookalike domains like these – which abuse the Facebook brand – are often used for phishing, fraud, and scams.

“We sent notices to Whoisguard between October 2018 and February 2020, and despite their obligation to provide information about these infringing domain names, they declined to cooperate,” Dubois said. “We don’t want people to be deceived by these web addresses, so we’ve taken legal action,” the Facebook exec said.

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