What have search engines, football clubs, and the royal families all got in common? Not much, except they’ve all been the victims of domain squatting. And they’re not alone. Opportunists and cyberscammers shadow brands, organizations, and prominent figures, exploiting their digital footprints and registering lucrative domains. Whether they’re leveraging these assets to get a big payout, or actively running phishing and impersonation campaigns, domain squatting means trouble.
In this guide, we’ll tackle the topic from top to bottom. We’ll examine the infrastructural foundations of domain registry and squatting, and learn from notable cases, resolved and otherwise. Exploring the history of domain squatting helps you prepare for your digital strategies in the future, as we conclude with solutions for squat-proofing your portfolio. You can also get started with a free domain squatting check right here, to see who’s lurking around your online assets.
Defining domain squatting
Domain squatting means registering infringing web addresses and related assets. In a more malicious sense than property squatting, cyber squatters anticipate things like product launches or brand expansions to scoop up tactically important domains, subdomains, and extensions, predicting their value for legitimate organizations and standing in the way. As you don’t always have to own a trademark or intellectual property before registering a domain, anyone can do it at any time, as long as it’s available. Some domain squatters even monitor trademark houses, and snap up domains as soon as a new registry appears.
Obviously, domain squatting represents a murky grey area, where it’s perfectly legal in the tumultuous free market of our digital landscape. On one side of the spectrum, you have innocent entrepreneurs who buy a website in their home country, not knowing that an ambitious brand in another part of the world has their eye on it. On the other side of the spectrum, you have cybercriminal gangs, cybersquatting and typosquatting governments and banks to launch phishing attacks and finance scams against the most vulnerable in society. You also have opportunists who notice when existing domain registrations expire and jump in before anyone else notices. As we’ll see, domain squatting in all its forms affects businesses across industries, from SMEs to the largest corporations on the planet.
How it affects businesses
As mentioned above, domain squatting even struck Google, showing that no one is safe from losing their domains. A former employee owned the domain for around 60 seconds in 2016 when he noticed that the domain registration lapsed. Remarkably, a similar thing happened again five years later. An Argentinian man paid as little as $2.50 for the search engine’s .com.ar extension when it missed renewal in 2021. After he noticed that their website shut down following the domain’s registry expiration, he purchased it legally online. Google managed to resolve both cases quickly and cheaply, but you can imagine the existential struggles that a business with fewer resources might face.
For example, while Liverpool Football Club succeeded in the Premier League in 2025, they still face setbacks when it comes to domains. The club’s representatives actually lost a domain dispute resolution case for the website liverpoolfctickets .com, an address that contains their organization name and a potential source of ecommerce revenue. Czech arbitration panellists ruled against them when they attempted to claim the domain, and it still remains a parking page at the time of writing.
Plenty of businesses earn their reputation and their living on key domains. In many cases, detecting and eliminating cybersquatters makes the difference between growth and losses, between success and disaster.
Organizations and authorities face domain squatting
Beyond the private sector, non-profit groups and even governments face domain impersonations and lapses too. Hundreds of thousands of citizens in Northern Ireland received communications that included a weblink related to their property taxes, in April this year. Unfortunately, this link led to a website that was not owned by the Northern Irish government. According to cybersecurity academics, the link led to a cybersquatting page that attempted to download malware.
Victims suffer when digital squatters exploit public trust in governments and authorities. In the private and public sectors alike, we have a duty to stay vigilant. Domain monitoring and digital squatting enforcement tactics help us keep organizations safe, along with the people who rely on them online.
When celebrities and business leaders suffer domain squatting
Crucially, it’s not just organizations that face domain infringements and digital crises. Cybersquatters and opportunists nab assets from CEOs, executives, athletes, actors, and anyone in the public eye. They often hold relevant and high-traffic domains to ransom, or use them for further schemes. Cybercriminal tactics involve fake promotion schemes, typically job scams or crypto, or generally using the domain’s mail servers for phishing attacks.
While VIPs and executives face the majority of squatting attacks, opportunists even target babies. According to the BBC, domain names mentioning the name “George” rose by ten percent in the wake of the British Prince’s birth. One prince-related-domain holder put their asset on £10,000. This headline-grabbing story illustrates a broader problem that affects business leaders and VIPs around the world. As proactive prevention proves far more cost-effective than reclaiming a squatted domain, many fight back with tools like VIP and Executive Protection.
Strategies for fighting back
When it comes to eliminating domain squatting, there’s clearly no bullet-proof solution – even Google has its issues! That being said, implementing a few best practice principles help you minimize your risk and maximise your opportunities.
Staying clear on your domain strategy limits the room for domain squatters to intercede. When you align product launches, trademark registrations, and domain portfolio expansion at the right times, you’ll streamline your budget and minimize worry, saving your team time and effort.
However, the problem is, domain squatting might already be an issue plaguing your brand as you read this. Manual detection and enforcement actions work fairly well for individuals and small businesses looking to secure their online landscape. Simply Googling for infringements and email domain hosts about the results can help. However, for SMEs and enterprises, Corporate Domain Management delivers effective solutions for detecting and eliminating domain squatting at scale.
Conclusions: Your next steps
To summarize, domain squatting can affect anyone and everyone. From Royal Princes in the UK, to global corporations like Google, everyone suffers from disputes on their online landscape.
Knowing the scale of the problem delivers the best route towards solving your issues. Make the most of your insights, and get started with a free domain squatting audit right here.
