The report found that 80 percent of abusive sites flagged in 2007 were still active today

Cybersquatting continued to rank as brandjackers tool of choice for exploiting reputable brands, growing by 18 percent in 2008. In addition, phishers expanded their targets in 2008, with 444 organizations phished for the first time.

"Online brand abuse has reached a critical phase during which new exploits are accelerating while older threats endure, causing real and tangible harm to corporate reputations, intellectual property, customer relations and revenue streams," said Irfan Salim, president and chief executive officer of MarkMonitor.

"The good news is that brand holders have resources available to them to take action. The companies who are most successful in fighting abuse are those that make defending their brand a priority at the highest levels of management."

 A total of 440,584 instances of Cybersquatting were identified in Q4, followed by 86,837 instances of false association and 33,614 instances of pay-per-click abuse.

Consistent quarter-over-quarter growth in cybersquatting for two years indicates that brandjackers are increasingly leveraging trademarks as they make use of best practices in search engine optimization to divert traffic to illegitimate sites.

Ecommerce abuse increased by 46 percent over 2008 and 13 percent over Q3 to a yearly high of 24,589 instances.

Abuses of apparel brands grew 28 percent in 2008. Other industries that experienced significant growth in brand attacks included automotive at 21 percent, high technology at 21 percent, and food and beverage at 17 percent.

The United States, Germany and the United Kingdom continue to host the majority of brandjacking Web sites. More than half (68%) of Web sites that host brand abuse are in the United States. Germany hosts 9 percent followed by the United Kingdom at 4 percent.

Attacks against payment services increased 122 percent in the second half of the year and attacks against financial services grew 51 percent during the same period, an increase MarkMonitor attributes to the current economic crisis.

"Brandjackers are honing their techniques as they continue building their revenue on the good names of leading brands globally," said Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor.

"That 80 percent of abuse sites identified in our study last year remain active today confirms that abuse is economically sustainable for fraudsters. We expect attacks to grow both internationally and in complexity, further increasing the threat to organizations’ reputations and revenues."

Brand protection firm MarkMonitor recently released the latest version of its Brandjacking quarterly survey. Among the company’s findings, company CMO Fred Felman told WebProNews they witnessed a significant year over year drop in domain kiting, which is the serial registration of the same domains over and over again.

This drop corresponded with another declining form of brand abuse. Kiters regularly placed the Google product AdSense for Domains onto their continuously registered domains. They essentially kept the domain name perpetually registered, at minimal cost, while reaping click-through profits from the ad placement.

Google shut that window when it began requiring domains to be open for six days before being considered for acceptance into AdSense for Domains. MarkMonitor’s numbers showed the impact: for the first quarter of 2008, pay per click abuse dropped by 42 percent year over year, by their research.

Other abuses happened through the mechanism of search engine optimization. Someone looking for adult traffic, in an example shared by Felman, set up a site stuffed with travel keywords. The site served its purpose, gaining valuable placement in the search rankings and driving traffic to it.

Once that traffic began arriving in volume, helped along with a spam campaighn, the domain owner swapped out the keyword-stuffed content for adult advertising. Visitors expecting to find something related to travel received an eyeful of scantily clad woman and plenty of links to adult sites.

Felman said MarkMonitor sees this brand abuse happen a lot. People game SEO with gibberish search terms. He also contended the travel-turned-adult site work was a planned tactic, with no change in registration when the site flipped content.

As people look for travel deals online, Felman suggested they avoid purchasing airline travel vouchers from auction sites. Despite the purported discount, such vouchers are not transferable to others. Felman said MarkMonitor gave it a try to see if such a voucher purchased this way would work.

It didn’t. Avoid such auctions when planning your vacation this summer. They simply serve as a way to move money from innocent people to scammers.