Digital risk protection is a service that finds fake websites, look-alike domain names and fake social media accounts that pretend to be a company, and gets them taken down. It is also called brand protection. Criminals use the fakes to trick the company's customers into giving away money, passwords or card details.
A look-alike domain is a web address chosen to resemble the real one. It may change one letter, add a word such as "-support" or "-kyc", or use a different ending, such as .co instead of .in. The fake site copies the real site's logo and layout. Links to it are sent by SMS, WhatsApp or email. This kind of trick is called phishing.
The service searches in several places. It reads the lists of newly registered domain names every day, and flags names that resemble the brand. It scans social media for pages and profiles that use the brand's name or logo. It checks app stores for fake apps, and online marketplaces for fake products. Some services also read the links inside phishing emails that people have reported.
Take, for example, a gold loan company in Thrissur. One morning, the service finds a new domain that adds "-goldloan-offer" to the company's name. The site offers a very low interest rate and asks visitors to pay a ₹1,999 "processing fee" by UPI. The service also finds a Facebook page and a WhatsApp number that use the same logo. Within an hour, an analyst confirms that all three are fake. The service then asks the domain registrar, the company that sold the domain name, to suspend it. It asks the hosting company to remove the site, and the social media company to remove the page. It also reports the site to the lists of unsafe sites that web browsers check, so that browsers show a warning to anyone who opens it. The site goes offline two days later.
Speed matters most here. A fake site does most of its damage in its first few days, before customers learn that it is fake.
Digital risk protection works next to several other tools. DMARC and email authentication stops attackers from sending email from the company's real domain, so attackers register look-alike domains instead. Integrated cloud email security (ICES) catches the phishing email itself inside employees' inboxes. Fake products on shopping sites are handled together with marketplace management for brands. And dark-web monitoring watches for the data that fake sites have already stolen.