Facebook filed a lawsuit today against 12 domain names registered by Compsys Domain Solutions Private Ltd, an Indian provider of proxy/privacy services, domains that impersonate Facebook apps and were allegedly used for malicious purposes.
According to the social network's IP Litigation Director and Associate General Counsel Christen Dubois, Compsys did not respond to any requests to clarify their intents.
This lawsuit was filed by Facebook "to prevent fraud and stop the malicious use of our company and product names."
Among the 12 lookalike domains registered by Compsys and designed to allegedly deceive people, Dubois mentions facebook-verify-inc.com, instagramhjack.com, and videocall-whatsapp.com.
"We regularly scan the internet for domain names and apps that infringe on our trademarks and today’s lawsuit is part of this ongoing effort to protect people from phishing, credential theft and other methods of online fraud," Dubois said.
"We filed suit after we reached out to Compsys about these domain names and did not receive any response."
Dubois also emphasized that "[r]egistrars and proxy services have a responsibility to take down deceptive and malicious websites."
This is the third time in the last two years that Facebook took legal action against proxy services and registrars for allowing malicious actors to abuse their platforms.
In March 2020, Facebook sued domain name registrar Namecheap and its proxy service Whoisguard "for registering domain names that aim to deceive people by pretending to be affiliated with Facebook apps" and often being used "for phishing, fraud and scams."
"Whoisguard, registered or used 45 domain names that impersonated Facebook and our services, such as instagrambusinesshelp.com, facebo0k-login.com and whatsappdownload.site," Dubois said at the time.
Last year, in October 2019, Facebook filed another lawsuit against domain name registrar OnlineNIC and its privacy service ID Shield for allowing the registration of lookalike domains like www-facebook-login.com and facebook-mails.com.
"By mentioning our apps and services in the domain names, OnlineNIC and ID Shield intended to make them appear legitimate and confuse people," Facebook's Director of Platform Enforcement and Litigation Jessica Romero said. "This activity is known as cybersquatting and OnlineNIC has a history of this behavior."
Update: Clarified that Facebook filed suits against the domain names, not Compsys.
Read the original article and additional information at Cyware Social