Diverting traffic
to fake airline sites
Robert Evans
THE
United Nations trademark and copyright agency WIPO revealed the
existence of a raft of fake Web addresses which divert customers of
airlines, hotels and car hire firms to a site selling cheap travel
deals.
The revelation came in
a report from the agency on a ruling from its Internet dispute
settlement centre that one of the phoney sites —
airfranceairlines.com — should be closed down for infringing the
rights of French flag carrier Air France.
Air France, which
operates the largest medium-haul network in Europe in terms of daily
flights and uses airfrance.com as its main site, argued in its
complaint to WIPO that its name was being used to produce business
for rival airlines.
The report listed nine
other sites including holidayinnhotels.org,
hilton-hotel-reservation.com and marriot-hotels.com to us-airways.net,
lufthansa-airlines.net and british-air-ways.com as operating in the
same way.
The other three were
twaairlines.org, qantas-airlines.com and al-italia.com.
All sites, and others
using names of car hire companies as well as airlines and hotels
already ordered closed by WIPO, were registered by a Patrick Ory
with residences in the Netherlands and Cancun, Mexico, according to
the report.
Travellers surfing the
Web for well-known brands and assuming the lookalike addresses are
genuine find themselves linked to a site operated by Cheap Travel
Network where they can compare prices over a range of offers.
The WIPO report said
the Web engine at the phoney Air France site as well as the others
— was powered by a company named Qixo.com, which offers Webmasters
the chance to earn commission from sales they bring.
The Network’s own
site is also powered by Qixo, which itself runs a similar cheap
travel site at qixo.com and describes itself as a worldwide
specialist in discount airline travel, hotels, car rentals and
vacation packages.
Over the past three
years, Wipo has handled over 5,000 cases of so-called ‘cybersquatting’
by firms or individuals who register sites with well-known names —including
football clubs and film stars — with which they have no
connection.
Many of these were set
up with the aim of selling them at a profit to their more obvious
owners, or to attract business to Internet shopping — and
sometimes to pornographic sites.
Nearly all sites
involved have been closed after rulings by WIPO arbitrators,
although Bimbo S.A., a Spanish confectionery maker, was told by the
agency that it could not lay exclusive claim to the use of its name
in Web addresses.
WIPO said the owner of
the phoney sites could earn $ 3 to 5 per ticket sold simply from
creating traffic to Cheap Travel Network and Qixo.xom
—the default addresses to which any hit on them is redirected.
Ory failed to file any
response to the complaint, or to earlier complaints in which he was
involved over sites like holidayinnhotels.com and europe-car.com,
said the arbitrator for WIPO, the World Intellectual Property
Organisation.
Therefore, the
arbitrator ruled, "he registered the domain name at issue —
and many other infringing domain names — with the clear intention
of diverting Internet users to a Website that competes with (Air
France’s) services for...personal gain."
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