Facebook on Monday filed a lawsuit against 12 domain names registered by India-based proxy service, Compsys Domain Solutions Private Ltd to prevent fraud and stop the malicious use of their company and product names.
Christen Dubois, IP Litigation Director for Facebook, in a blog post on Monday, stated that the domains created by the Indian company “were designed to deceive people by impersonating our family of apps, like: facebook-verify-inc.com, instagramhjack.com and videocall-whatsapp.com.”
He further added, “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 also cited that Facebook filed suit against Compsys only after they did not receive a response from the company about the domain names.
“Registrars and proxy services have a responsibility to take down deceptive and malicious websites,” he said.
This is not the first time that Facebook has filed lawsuits against domain name registrar or proxy service in the recent past. In March this year, Facebook filed a lawsuit in Arizona against Namecheap, a domain name registrar, as well as its proxy service, Whoisguard, for registering domain names that aimed to deceive people by pretending to be affiliated with Facebook apps.
Similarly, another lawsuit was filed by Facebook in October 2019 in California against OnlineNIC and its privacy/proxy service ID Shield for registering domain names, or web addresses, that pretended to be affiliated with the company, such as www-facebook-login.com and facebook-mails.com.
