Warning: Fake Firms Might Be Operating with Your Identity
Stolen bank and credit cards. Hacked computer systems. Diverted e-mails. Phishing scams. The world today is a minefield of identity theft explosives ready to discharge at any moment. As if it weren't difficult enough to operate in this world of identity theft, your entire law office "persona" might be at risk.
According to "Fake Law Firm Websites Use Real Firms' Photos and Info, but Alter Contact Details," a 2014 abajournal.com article by Martha Neil, fake law firms are establishing what appears to be a legitimate Internet presence "to scam would-be legal clients" by stealing parts or the entirety of real firms' websites and using that material for their own websites. For example, Dovernor Chambers, a fake law firm that claims to exist in the United Kingdom, has a website featuring wording from the websites of real law firms, and for a while it also contained the picture, lifted from a law firm website, of a lawyer in his Kansas office.
Another way that identity thieves steal lawyers' identities is through "typosquatting." In "Law Firm Sues over Doppelganger Domain Name, Says Infringing Website Is Intercepting Attorney Email," a 2012 abajournal.com article, Neil reported that a New York firm sued a person who took a deliberately confusing website name and, through it, is intercepting the New York firm's e-mail. In an ironic twist, the New York firm is a firm that specializes in intellectual property and protecting clients' intellectual property and brand names. Joseph Gioconda of the Gioconda Law Group said that the firm periodically analyzes its domain name portfolio, just as it tells its clients to do, and in this way found the infringer.
Unfortunately, some of the identity scams perpetrated on law firms, such as website theft, are difficult for the legitimate lawyers to detect and, thus, guard against. Others, such as typosquatting, can be stopped with some vigilance. To protect your name, goodwill, and bank account, make sure that you include in your schedule time to execute some identity theft offense.
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