Dealing With Brand Impersonations on Social Networks

Brandjacking—imposters impersonating company brands on social networks—can be used to gain consumer trust or tarnish reputations. Each major platform (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace) has processes for addressing impersonation issues; proactive brand registration on social networks helps prevent problems.

What to do if your company’s brand is impersonated on a social networking website? I addressed this topic in a post at the Internet Storm Center as a follow-up to my presentation on social networking risks and rewards:

Among the risks of social media activities is the opportunity for an impostor to impersonate the brand, using it to gain confidence of trusting consumers or to conduct other activities that tarnish the targeted brand. Let’s look at some examples and what we can do about this.

The posting describes what brandjacking entails and points to instructions for addressing impersonation issues on Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook.