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FreeCreditReport.com Wins 1,017 Domains By UDRP
typosquatting writes to mention that the largest domain dispute case since the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was enacted ten years ago has been decided. The decision saw 1,017 cyber-squatting domains turned over to ConsumerInfo.com, owner of FreeCreditReport.com. The full decision can be read via the National Arbitration Forum website. "It would seem that this decision sets or reinforces a fairly strong precedent that trademark holders may be entitled to, not only to the domain name that exactly matches their trademark, but also to a wide swath of other domain names including nearly every possible misspelling or other variation of that trademark, potentially even if the trademark is comprised of generic words."
to solve the important dilemma of people not wanting to be responsible for typing correctly.
Jeez this is so stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's funny that "free"creditreport.com is upset that someone else is profiting off their name, when their name is designed to profit off someone else's. I don't think they existed before the US government mandated the credit agencies give you a free copy of your credit report every year (via annualcreditreport.com). "free"creditreport.com doesn't actually give you a credit report for free; you have to enroll in a reporting service to get it.
Don't do it. You give them your info and get a free credit report, but you have to opt out like AOL or else they'll charge you. When you call them to opt out they haggle and harass you like AOL did ("Are you sure you want to cancel? Here are our other plans...") and you have to tell them no multiple times until either of you gives up. Then they continue to spam the living fuck out of your inbox.
/rant
There are millions of people in the world with the same name. If I want a web site in my name, and someone else has it, I have to wait for them to die before I can have a site with my name on it. Unlike license plates where I can put up -01 or -02 or whatever, I can't do that now (oh noes, its too close). This is really really dumb. If you've ever tried to find someone on Facebook and has to go through ten pages of people with the same name, you know what I mean.
I do not really agree that domains that only bear similarity to a mark should be transferred, but in this case, they are part of a large collection of domains that appear to be very obviously registered in bad faith, with the sole intention of typosquatting.
I wonder if the registrant paid for those domains... this should have set him back at least $5k.
see a Text Widget
It would seem that this decision sets or reinforces a fairly strong precedent that trademark holders may be entitled to, not only to the domain name that exactly matches their trademark, but also to a wide swath of other domain names including nearly every possible misspelling or other variation of that trademark, potentially even if the trademark is comprised of generic words.
Does it? It strikes me that FreeCreditReport variants have more potential to defraud regular people than your regular news site. If slashdot tried to do the same thing, and pick up all of the .coms, .nets, etc on its variants, it would probably be shot down. It would be a bit nice if this precendent was viewed in context as an exception where the public would benefit from not having ambiguous urls over the corporate entity actually owning the urls.
FreeCreditReport.com charges $15 and is run by lying, typo-squatting douches at Experian.
... means squat.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
....requires enrollment in Triple Advantage (tm).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I fell for this. They want $19.99 a month to "protect" your credit.
Don't get me wrong though, it was kind of neat getting real time credit scores on your account, an email alert every time some yahoo looked at your report, and access to a one click instant credit lock. But in the end, unless your going to buy a house or a car you don't really need up to the second data on your report.
Though, to be honest, I think we should be given access, atleast once a month rather than once a year. Its not like the data is that hard to display and it be far more useful to check for credit card fraud.
I fell for the catchy jingle.
It's OK to admit it.
In one or more of the following ways
(1) adding "ing," changing the tense of the mark to a present participle;
(2) adding the letter "s," changing the mark from singular to plural;
(3) adding a generic or descriptive word to the mark;
(4) adding a generic or descriptive word to the mark that has an obvious association with Complainant's business;
(5) adding an abbreviation of a geographic word to the mark; (6) adding a geographic word to the mark;
(7) misspelling the mark by changing a letter in the mark to a different letter;
(8) misspelling the mark by changing a letter in the mark to a number;
(9) misspelling the mark by adding a letter within the mark;
(10) adding a letter to the beginning or end of the mark;
(11) misspelling the mark by adding a number within the mark;
(12) adding a number to the beginning or end of the mark;
(13) omitting the period between the first-level domain, "www," and the mark;
(14) changing the generic top-level domain (gTLD) included in the mark from ".com" to ".org;" and/or
(15) adding hyphens to the mark. Any individual disputed domain name typically contains Complainant's mark and one of these changes.
I'm glad they won. The showed plenty of examples of other companies that also won b/c of squatters like Bank Of America vs wwwbankofamerica.com (squatter removed the ".").
The New York Times recently did an extensive article on this scam.
The entire basis of their operation is to fool people into paying for something advertised as free. They claim that their site discloses its fees, but the disclosure is still discrete enough to fool massive numbers of people.
Any site where you make a purchase should disclose the fact that you are making a purchase with at least the level of clarity that you encounter on a reputable site such as Amazon.com. Also a service that advertises itself as "free" should never be allowed to charge -- even if they gratuitously disclosed their fee (which they don't) it would still be a bait an switch scam.
Tip: There are three credit agencies. You can check each one once a year for free. Check a different one every four months ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Let us not forget that the majority of these sites are owned by the credit reporting agencies themselves. They have set up a system of credit reporting that is so ridiculously flawed security wise that they can now sell the people "protection" from the very same system. Good business to be in...
Not true. Applying for new lines of credit will lower your score, but checking it yourself will not. See http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs6c-CreditScores.htm#5
-William Brendel
We should be given access on a completely unrestricted basis 24/7/365 including holidays, weekends, etc. This is data that is used to deny you bank loans, car loans, causes higher rates on many things, etc. No one should be allowed to keep this data without allowing the affected parties to view every single fucking record. Furthermore, there should be financial penalties for any inaccuracies. They accidentally show that you paid late once when you really didn't? That's a $20000 fine, paid to YOU. I don't know why we think that companies need to be allowed to keep records like this and use them in business dealings but keep them completely secret. (Access once per year is nonsense, that's as close to secret as humanly possible)
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
FreeCreditReport is a ripoff of AnnualCreditReport.com, the real free site which the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires the three major credit bureaus to maintain at their expense.
"ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. and Freecreditreport.com are not affiliated with the annual free credit report program. Under a new Federal law, you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies. To request your free annual report under that law, you must go to www.annualcreditreport.com."
Has to be said : what exactly do you get "for free" from freecreditreport.com? You can't get any information without paying and signing up for a service that you have to beg the phone reps to get canceled. Scarier still, the company that runs the site has the power to truly screw you over if you contest the charges on your credit card, since they ARE one of the credit reporting companies.
The submitter's name is "typosquatting." The linked article was written by Alias Encore's PR flack , and exists for the sole purpose of selling Alias-Encore's software and services-- namely "helping companies increase highly qualified traffic to their websites through the strategic acquisition of misspelled domain names."
Don't ask me why this is the case...
Because - as I have recently found after starting a job here - the American banking system is utterly insane.
I can't believe you people still use cheques, for fuck's sake. And that even with a 6 figure income you're looking at 6-12 months of "credit building" before you can qualify for a cheap car loan without being raped on interest rates.
Any company or government institution can put whatever they want on your credit report and you have no right to defend yourself. Serial killers even get a trial.
FreeCreditReport.com is a total scam. It's not free - you have to pay to get the report. But everyone's entitled to a free credit report once a year anyway, direct from the reporting corps, under US credit laws.
And now that scam has funded this evil precedent.
Goddamn the lawyers.
--
make install -not war
... and it be far more useful to check for credit card fraud.
Precisely, and that's exactly what the Big Three don't want. If people started checking their credit record at will, and as a matter ordinary household economics, the credit bureaus would be under a lot more pressure to clean up their respective acts. That will cost them lots of money, and they're perfectly happy that 'x" number of us get screwed out of our savings and our credit every year. Otherwise, they would have to actually fix the broken system they've built. There's no incentive whatsoever for them to treat us decently in this respect, mainly because there's no downside to them if we get shafted. Congress, of course, could fix that very easily with effective regulation and enforcement, but it's unlikely that will ever come to pass ... too many billions (of our money) on the line.
Furthermore, the corporations that depend upon the credit system (banks and credit-card issuers, for example) want millions of people who don't understand the system, don't understand how to improve their score, or what affects it. That way they can keep milking those people with high interest rates, late charges, and so forth. It's no small potatoes, my friend.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is data that is used to deny you bank loans
When a U.S. lender uses a credit report to deny you a loan, you have the right under the FCRA to know which bureau the lender used, so you can get a copy of your credit report yourself.
That worthless bullshit garbage means NOTHING outside the borders of the Empire.
Seriously, you can rack up tens of thousands in debt and just bounce to another country and get citizenship there leaving your silly social number and all that Imperial rabid consumerism as you get a new ID/identity for your new citizenship. All your three Master's can do then is cry into their platinum cups while sitting on their gold thrones on top of their titanium floors with embedded diamonds and pearls.
The only check you need is a reality check with this set of debt chains you Imperials so proudly wear for some asinine reason.
What, you think the purpose of a credit file is to serve the borrower?
Credit scores and credit reports are for lenders. Why would they fine themselves for incorrectly reporting your credit history? The system is broken not because there is inadequate oversight or accountability regarding lending and reporting practices (though it is obviously grossly inadequate). The system is broken because it is designed from its very foundations to ensure that no matter what, lenders always come out on top. This is why fraud is not more aggressively pursued, and why incorrect reporting is shrugged off as a necessary part of doing business. The free-market mentality is that the only mechanism required to ensure correct reporting is the loss of revenue due to competitors valuation of lending risk being more accurate than one's own. And of course, the consumer is the one who always gets shafted under this system.
Credit reports are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are a necessary aspect of determining credit risk. On the other hand, they are used these days to evaluate far more than one's creditworthiness--and they do so using very personal and specific data about you, information that you would think ought to be your right to know whether they are being used for or against you. The system is corrupt because it is being increasingly applied to aspects of one's life far beyond what was originally intended, yet the borrower is really the only party who truly cares about the accuracy of the data it contains.
And yet all 3 have the incontestable power to destroy your life.
freecreditreport.com will automatically sign you up for a service which you can cancel at any time. They will never ask how they will bill you because they will steal it out of one of your bank accounts as 3TVC. yeah, if you call to cancel they won't actually cancel. I've talked with like 3 or 4 people who have used the service and all of them said that freecreditreport.com didn't cancel even though they claimed that they did so on the phone. You have to get their payments disputed through your bank once you figure out which bank account they are pick-pocketing you from. I dont understand why they aren't all arrested and thrown in jail. My wife used this service, found out 6 months later that 3TVC was actually freecreditreport.com, tried to get refunds on them, and found that the bank wouldn't refund that far even though they had records of her account much farther back. She only got 3 months back. When she talked with someone from the bank, they said they get this all the time from freecreditreport.com. WHY ISN'T THIS ILLEGAL!?! THIS IS MINOR THEFT ON A LARGE SCALE AND EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT IT!!!!
With a "6 figure" income you need to borrow money to buy basic transportation?
We don't use cheques, we use checks. I don't particularly care that you need to re-enforce the differences our languages have developed over the years, most of us are aware that we spell somethings different just so its clear we are NOT YOU. Get over yourself.
You're the only person here who feels the need to "re-enforce the differences". I write it that way because that's the way I've been writing it for thirty years.
I bought my first car with a low interest rate and the car cost more than half my yearly salary, it was the first thing I bought on credit. Not really sure what your problem is, but until about a year ago having no credit wasn't really an issue for any one unless you were old enough that no credit meant you had probably had bad credit and waited for the bad stuff to disappear off your record.
The problem is when you arrive in the USA, you have no credit. The ridiculous part is where this is inescapably equated with having bad credit.
I can't believe you people still haven't gotten over yourselves. Keep it up, at least the rest of the world can see where we got our arrogance from that way. By the way, hows' that world power thing going for you now days?
Apparently you think I'm British. I'm not.
In many places, a chip-and-PIN credit card gives up the "stolen card" protection I'm used to, on the blatent falsehood that someone couldn't use your stolen card unless you told them the PIN.
And there's always a rationalization for living beyond your means, but very few legitimate reasons to get a car loan. The only exception I can see is if you're a taxi driver buying your cab (or owner/operator of a comercial truck or etc) where it's really a small-business loan. Don't have much cash? Drive a crapwagon and save up until you do. Better return elsewhere? Exceedingly unlikely (given you usually have a choice between a below-market interest rate and a significant up-front discount on the car), though I guess there are cases like the now-defunct Saturn, where they negotiated on financing instead of price. But most people can't understand risk-adjusted rate of return, so they borrow money to invest.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"The free market ALWAYS works...if it exists."
No, no, no, absolutely not!
It does not always work.
Look up:
Moral hazard problem
Coase theorem (negative externalities in an unowned resource, e.g. the air/environment)
Those two things should be enough to show that the free market doesn't always work. And, of course, there's the problem with monopolies as you said.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.