Ancestry Magazine

The Internet can be valuable property, and protecting it is getting complicated. Here’s how you can help.

I have fat fingers so I tend to make frequent finger fumbles while keyboarding. Ten fingers versus a QWERTY keyboard with over 100 keys is hardly a fair contest, and my typing tends to come out the worse for it. In days of yore, such mistakes were called typos, or typographical errors.

With modern-day spell checkers in computer software, typos are not the problem they once were for those of us who are digitally-challenged. Grammar checkers can even prevent the misplacing of homonyms in documents. While documents can be made mechanically “clean” of wrong spellings or wrong word usage, this ability has not been extended to Internet browsing.

Surfing the World Wide Web may occasionally require the barbaric custom of manually typing in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)–the “human-friendly” addresses of websites. Typing a web address into the location or address field at the top of a web browser is much less convenient than simply clicking on a hyperlink. It is also much more prone to human error.

The potential for incorrectly typing web addresses has spawned a problem that is unique to the Internet. The maintainers of some websites are taking advantage of people’s inability to correctly remember or correctly type URLs of other more popular websites. These disingenuous websites use web addresses that are similar to, or slight misspellings of, the addresses of other websites. The objective of these confusing websites is to drive visitors to their own site. The targets of this sort of misdirection are generally websites that are popular and draw lots of visitors. The more visitors to the target website, the greater the likelihood that a finger fumble will lure a visitor to the wrong website.

Such practices are known as cybersquatting and typosquatting, and they are common on the Internet in every field of interest. The websites of commercial entities, entertainers, politicians, charities, and others have all been subjected to this treatment. Unfortunately, so have many genealogy websites. This article will look at these issues within Internet genealogy. First, cybersquatting and typosquatting will be more closely defined. Then examples within the genealogical community will be highlighted. Finally, what can be done regarding these problems will be investigated.

Defining the Problem
Cybersquatting is generally considered to be registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with a bad-faith intent to profit from a trademark belonging to someone else. It is possible to register such a domain name because the Internet registry companies do not have the ability to determine legitimate ownership over a trademarked domain name. Domain names are registered on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of the registrant’s right to the name. Cybersquatters often register domain names to which they have no legal claim in the hopes that the rightful owner will pay them for the domain name. Such blackmail may succeed due to the high c ost of litigating a domain name infringement case.

In the past, cybersquatting was done mostly with domain names ending in .com–the primary suffix used for URLs. With the wide-spread acceptance of the Internet, more and more legitimate owners of domain names have registered their .com websites. Nowadays, it is more common for cybersquatters to be claim jumping on domain names similar to a primary .com URL owned by a legitimate registrant. These similar domain names have either a different suffix (e.g., .net, .info, .org), a different country code suffix (e.g., .us, .uk, .fr), or include hyphenation or other correctly spelled modifications to the original domain name.

Typosquatting is a specific form of cybersquatting. Because of the probability that some visitors will mistype a URL, a typosquatter will register one or more domain names that are misspellings of a popular website. Since that website usually receives a high volume of traffic, the typosquatter can expect their misspelled website to attract some portion of the traffic bound for the legitimate site. The typosquatter may then use that traffic to sell advertising space on their website or redirect traffic to pages that sell related products or services, perhaps even to those of the original website’s competitors. Once again, the squatter may hope to sell the misspelled domain name to the legitimate domain owner.

Cybersquatting Examples in Genealogy
Arguably, one of the most valuable genealogy websites in the world is the FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service from the LDS Church at <www.familysearch.org>. Note that FamilySearch has also registered the domain names <www.familysearch. com> and <www.familysearch.net>, among others, to assist visitors in finding the correct website. All three of the above URLs point to the FamilySearch website. This free, non-commercial website has attracted apparent cybersquatters due to its popularity and press attention. S ome examples of possible cybersquatters trying to take advantage of FamilySearch include <www.family-search.org>, <www.familysearch.us>, and <www.familysearch.de>.

Not all registered domain names used by possible cybersquatters are actually functioning on the Internet. For example, <www.familysearch. info> will not be found if you type it into a web browser. However, that domain name is registered to what appears to be a company in Germany. To determine who owns a domain name, visit <www.uwhois.com> and type in the URL of interest. This service provides what information is known about the domain registrant.

Judging whether or not a potential cybersquatting situation exists for a legitimate URL can be difficult. An example from the National Archives and Records Administration will illustrate the hazards of jumping to conclusions regarding rights to domain names.

The National Archives website at <www.nara.gov> is an important source of information for genealogy in the United States. Possible cybersquatters seem to have registered <www.nara.com> and <www.nara. org>. But is it clear that only the National Archives has a right to <www.nara.something>? If you visit <www.nara.net>, you will see the legitimate website of the North American Rhea Association. This association is devoted to the flightless birds from South America know as rheas. Since the North American Rhea Association’s initials are the same as the National Archives and Records Administration’s, are the Rhea people cybersquatting on a domain name belonging to the National Archives? Probably not.

The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies at <www.feefhs.org> is a not-for-profit genealogy society that may have a cybersquatting situation due to <www.feefhs.com>. Oxford Ancestry, the DNA genealogy testing service at <www.oxfordancestors.com> may have cybersquatters camped around it at <www.oxfordancestors.c o.uk> and <www.oxfordancestry.com>. Finally, the publishers of this magazine who operate both <www.myfamily.com> and <www.ancestry.com> could face cybersquatting from <www.my-fami ly.com> and <www.ancestry.de>. Clearly, opportunities for cybersquatting within our genealogical community are rampant.

Typosquatting Examples in Genealogy
Perhaps the most outrageous examples of possible typosquatting in genealogy are those surrounding the American Family Immigration History Center at <www.ellis island.org> and <www.ellisisland records.org>. This site provides important resources for late-period immigration into the United States through Ellis Island in New York harbor. The single L in Ellis variation seems to be most favored by potential typosquatters, such as <www.elisis land.org>, <www.elisisland.com>, and <www.elisislandrecords.org>. Note that <www.elisislandrecords. org> even provides information on Ellis Island that may further confuse the visitor as to which site is actually the American Family Immigration History Center site. The missing “Is” in Island variation is represented by <www.ellisland.org>. Other misspellings of the URL may lead visitors to explicit pornography websites.

Dropping the final letter of a legitimate URL seems to be a popular ploy. The commercial genealogy site <www.familytreemaker.com> could face possible typosquatting from <www.familytreemake.com>. FamilySearch, a favorite target already mentioned, may see typosquatting resulting from <www.familysearc. com>. Typosquatting takes advantage of visitors’ inability to correctly type a URL every time. This exploitation of human error is a sad comment on those unscrupulous enough to try to profit by it.

Legal Remedies
What can be done about cybersquatting and typosquatting? Some legitimate trademark owners in genealogy have taken the precaution of registering domain names that may be subjected to cybersquatting. For example, MyFamily.com, Inc. owns <www.ancestr.com> and Genealogy. com owns <www.geneology.com>. These registrations effectively block cybersquatting for those domains.

Cybersquatting is illegal in the United States. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) went into effect in November 1999 (see <www.mama-tech.com/antipiracy. html>). It updates the Trademark Act to prohibit bad-faith registration trafficking or use of a domain name that is a registered trademark, is identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive mark (registered or unregistered), or is confusingly similar to or would tend to dilute a distinctive mark. Under ACPA, a plaintiff may receive statutory damages of up to $100,000 per domain name. The court may also order the transfer of the domain name to the plaintiff. Several high-profile cases have been successfully prosecuted under ACPA with awards granted to plaintiffs of half a million dollars or more for multiple domain name infringements. Obviously, the law is attempting to tame the “wild west” of cyberspace by providing a remedy for claim jumping. Thus far, I am unaware of any cases brought to court under ACPA within the genealogy community.

What Can You Do?
How can you recognize potential cybersquatting? If you type in a URL and the website appears to have changed drastically, you may be on a cybersquatter’s site. If the website you visit is relatively blank, promotes domain names for sale, or otherwise appears unrelated to genealogy, you are probably in the wrong place. If you were intending to visit a non-commercial website and the website you land on is full of advertisements, you are probably on the wrong website. If you see lots of pop-up ads or what seems to be a very generalized Internet directory, you’re probably in the wrong place again.

Avoid giving cybersquatters your traffic b y taking a few simple steps. When you successfully surf to a genealogy site of interest for the first time, add it to your bookmarks or favorites in your browser. That way you won’t have to type the URL manually again. If you mistakenly land on a typosquatter’s site that is very similar to a legitimate URL, clear your browser’s history file after you leave the typosquatter site, then visit the correct site. Clearing the history will prevent your browser’s auto-fill feature from mistakenly putting the wrong URL in the location or address when you begin to type the URL. These measures won’t stop cybersquatting, but it will help prevent the encouragement of such practices.

Mark Howells’ fat fingers hit the wrong keys at markhow@oz.net.