Register365 is warning sports stars and personalities to protect their online identity following the revelation that British sports stars have become the victims of cyber squatters who are holding their online domain names for ransom.
UK Aquatic stars Rebecca Addlington and Tom Daley have recently lost their web domains, with cyber squatters taking www.rebeccaaddlington.com and www.tomdaley.com. Domain names, which sell for less than €20 for 2 years are being sold at over 3000% their normal cost with one cyber squatter from China demanding $25,000 for Rebecca’s website alone.
Cyber squatters are online opportunists who exploit others when they fail to register a domain name, taking .com, .ie, .co.uk and .net permeations in a bid to cash in on stars and brands valuable names. Upon purchase, the squatter will hold the domain in bad faith with the intention of ransoming it out to the third party. Cyber squatters have previously targeted brands and well known people from Apple to David Cameron and Leona Lewis.
Addlington and Daly are not alone in this practice as other famous faces of UK sport have also been hijacked including:
• www.sebcoe.com - Lord Coe’s domain name is littered with adverts for Honda, The Royal Mail and Lloyds TSB
• www.zaraphillips.co.uk – Contains adverts for Jubilee sick bags
• www.lizziearmitstead.com – Lost the race for her web address
• www.kennyallen.com - Archers website is filled with targeted ads
• www.phillipsidowu.co.uk - Triple jumper skips his .co.uk and .com
But hey, the track is their forte not HTML so I guess we can cut them a break.