I was reading Page Six in the New York Post this past weekend and couldn’t help but chuckle at a piece, “P.R. pirate in site snookery.”
The bit of gossip discussed how the CEO of public relations firm 5WPR, Ronn Torossian, has been cybersquatting on domain names of his competitors.
Some examples of domains directing to 5WPR.com are those purportedly for Dan Klores (danklorespr.com), Howard Rubenstein (howardrubenstein.com), and Susan Blond (susanblondpr.com).
The real sites are dkcnews.com, rubenstein.com, susanblondinc.com, respectively.
According to the Strumpette blog, Susan Blond “went ballistic” upon finding out about the domain trickery.
Anyhow, I’m surprised that these well known companies didn’t better protect their online identities. Buying domain typos for your business is basic stuff for any company using the Internet.
Another key domain for companies to purchase is a version with no dot after the www (i.e. wwwdomain.com).
As I am writing this, all three PR firms mentioned above have neglected to grab this typo for their domains. Ironically, somebody did pick up www5WPR.com, and it doesn’t look like it was Torossian.