A Scottish firm has been caught up in a counterfeiting operation involving its online presence.
People have been duped after receiving emails from a company pretending to be Young Plant and Equipment Sales, the Stirling Observer reports.
Individuals then paid significant sums of money by bank transfer for equipment, but it never arrived as they had been viewing a bogus website.
Trading standards team leader Linda Hill said steps are being taken to close down the domain names being used for their illegal activities, but other web address are sprouting up.
However, this issue has been complicated by the fact that “as soon as we get one taken down another one springs up with yet another variation in the spelling of the domain name”.
This highlights how important it is for companies to purchase all relevant domains, as by doing so it minimizes the possibility of suffering reputational damage in the long term.
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