Building your brand helps you leverage your reputation to build customer trust and ecommerce revenue. However, the second that brands hit the market, they suffer constant threats from fakes and fraudsters. Infringements, counterfeit goods, and grey market sellers pop up everywhere, from marketplaces to emerging platforms like Temu and TikTok Shop. These scams put your revenue and customer trust on the line. That’s why you need to fight back, with a comprehensive plan to protect your brand. This brand protection guide will help you navigate these threats, and chart a course for ecommerce success. 

We have designed this resource to cover the entire landscape, providing a simple roadmap to secure your intellectual property. Here, we will explore everything from brand monitoring to tackling infringements, giving you the foundational knowledge to fight back effectively. To get a headstart, you can also pick up a free brand audit right here.

Understanding Brand Protection 

What is brand protection? Well, as a concept, it means defending your intellectual property (IP) online and offline. Brand protection covers all the tools and tactics you need to combat threats it your name, logos, and products. Unfortunately, these threats spread and evolve. Scammers use sophisticated tactics to trick your customers with counterfeit goods, fraudulent websites, and phishing schemes.

Brand threats create all kinds of headaches for modern businesses, stealing your revenue, damaging customer loyalty, and even posing issues around digital compliance. A proactive brand protection strategy means continuously detect these threats and take decisive action to neutralize them, safeguarding your customers and your organization’s future. 

A Brand Protection Guide to Fake Shops

Let’s take one specific example, to hone in on an something you need to protect your brand from: fake shops. But again, what are fake shops? Scammers increasingly set up fraudulent online outlets, either impersonating your brand across the whole site, or hosting counterfeit listings in a multi-brand fake shop.

To fight back against these kinds of threats, you need a brand protection guide from start to finish: detecting, tracking, verifying, and eliminating fake shops. The rise of artificial intelligence supercharges this threat, as it changes the game for many online interactions. In this case, generative AI unleashes fake shops with flawless copy, realistic fake images, and hundreds of malicious landing pages in minutes.  

Fakes shop scammers add extra barbs to their campaigns. They boost them on social media, turbochanrge their SEO, and even promote them with fake PPC ads. With brand risks appearing across all of these channels at high frequency, how can an organization fight back? Understanding this modern threat is the first critical step in this brand protection guide. 

Brand Protection from Start to Finish 

A comprehensive defence requires a methodical, end-to-end process. This section of our brand protection guide breaks down the key stages. 

Building Your Identity 

Your brand protection begins with a strong foundation. To get started, formally register your trademarks, copyrights, and domain names in all your key markets. This legal groundwork provides the undeniable proof of ownership you need to enforce your rights. It also helps you expand your online presence later on. 

Monitoring and Detection 

You cannot protect against threats you cannot see. Well-protected brands must monitor the entire digital ecosystem. Possible attack vectors include marketplaces, social media platforms, web domains, and app stores, to identify potential infringements. Monitoring all of these channels effectively means searching for your branded keywords, logos, and product imagery. 

Tracking and Analysis 

Once you detect a potential threat, you must track and analyze it. Successful brand protection includes the right checks and analytics to determine the scale and severity of each infringement. Is it a single counterfeit listing or part of a vast, coordinated network? Answering these kinds of questions delivers the keys to a well-protected brand. With sustained, rigorous tracking, you’ll prioritize the most damaging threats and understand the patterns of specific bad actors. 

Mitigation and Takedowns 

Next in this brand protection guide comes the enforcement phase. Armed with evidence of your registered IP, brands can formally request that the hosting platform, marketplace, or domain registrar removes the infringing content. Effective takedowns require precise communication and an understanding of each platform’s specific reporting procedures. Takedowns also mean persistence and patience, as each platform requires a different procedure, and you’ll find some far smoother than others. For more information, you can also find our guide to takedowns here.

A Brand Protection Guide to Resolution and Reporting 

A successful takedown is not the end of the brand protection story. To future-proof your strategy, you need to documented and analyze each case, to glean insights for the next infringement. Reporting on resolved threats helps you refine your monitoring strategies, identify recurring offenders, and demonstrate the return on investment of your brand protection program.

The Trouble with Manual Brand Protection

Many brands begin their defence with manual efforts, but this approach quickly reveals its limitations. Manually searching for fakes across dozens of platforms consumes countless hours. The process of filing takedown requests is equally tedious, often involving complex forms and unresponsive third-party administrators. As scammers use AI to scale their operations, manual methods simply cannot keep pace. The sheer volume of new infringements that appear daily makes it a losing battle, draining your team’s time and energy while allowing scams to proliferate. 

Brand Protection Platforms: Your Next Strategic Advantage

To overcome the inefficiencies of manual processes, leading brands leverage dedicated brand protection platforms. These solutions automate the entire lifecycle of protection, delivering speed and scale that manual efforts cannot match. Any decent brand protection guide must include the option of comprehensive solutions that support growing organizations to fight infringements and recover revenue online.

Integrated APIs and Global Monitoring 

Advanced platforms use smart APIs to integrate directly with major online platforms, enabling real-time monitoring of global marketplaces, social media channels, and digital ad networks. This provides a unified view of your brand’s digital presence, leaving no corner of the internet unchecked. 

AI-Powered Threat Clustering 

Modern platforms use artificial intelligence to detect threats and cluster them intelligently. This technology identifies connections between seemingly separate infringements, revealing large-scale networks run by a single bad actor. This allows you to dismantle entire operations with a single, coordinated action, rather than fighting one listing at a time.

Expert Legal Support for Takedowns 

The best platforms combine technology with human expertise. They provide access to legal professionals who specialize in intellectual property law and have established relationships with registrars and platform administrators globally. This expertise dramatically increases the speed and success rate of your takedown requests, ensuring swift resolution.

What’s Next for your Brand Protection Guide

This brand protection guide charts the path from understanding online threats to implementing a robust, technology-powered defence. Protecting your brand is an ongoing commitment that pays itself off by protecting your revenue, sustaining customer trust, and a strengthening market position. The journey to a secure brand begins with a clear assessment of your current exposure. 

We invite you to take the next step with a free, no-obligation brand audit. Our experts will scan the web for threats targeting your brand and deliver a personalized report detailing your risks and a clear action plan. Let us help you transform your brand protection from a reactive challenge into a strategic advantage. 

The post Brand Protection 101: Your Basic Brand Protection Guide appeared first on EBRAND.

AI revolutionizes fake websites, as cybercriminals churn out sophisticated scams at an unprecedented scale. Modern fake websites generate convincing copy, realistic product images, and targeted campaigns that fool even cautious consumers. 

The Evolution of Digital Deception 

Imagine you’re chatting about a cool new bag while at work with your colleagues one day. After the conversation, you scroll on your phone on your lunch break. As if by magic, an ad for the exact bag appears on your Instagram, with a one-time 50% discount. You click through, and it looks legitimate. That being said, everyone knows about the dangers of fake websites, so you check with the brand’s customer service team first.

When the team investigates the ad, they discover something puzzling. The website has vanished, replaced by a generic parking page. Worse still, the ad has thousands of impressions and hundreds of clicks, and it’s still up and running. This digital sleight of hand represents the latest evolution in fake websites and fraudulent online shops, where criminals use increasingly sophisticated techniques to avoid detection while maximizing their impact on both consumers and legitimate brands. 

The fake ads and rogue websites phenomenon demands deeper investigation. That’s why we’re launching a podcast with Lisa Deegan, where we’ll explore the role of AI in fake shops and brand protection. 

Traditional Fake Shop Tactics Still Threaten Brands 

Criminal networks have long employed established methods to create convincing fake websites that mimic legitimate businesses. Cybersquatters register domain names that closely resemble trusted brands, often using subtle misspellings or alternative top-level domains to fool unsuspecting consumers. These lookalike pages often host stolen product images, copied website layouts, and enough authentic-looking content to create the illusion of legitimacy. 

Traditional fake shops often operate for extended periods, collecting payment information and personal data from victims while delivering counterfeit products or nothing at all. These operations require significant manual effort to maintain, which historically limited their scale and sophistication. However, fundamentally, established fake shops wreak a huge impact on ecommerce. They exploit brand trust, they steal cash from innocent shoppers, and they slash online revenues.

For more information, check out our existing guides to fake websites and fake shops. We’ve covered how to find them, and how to take them down, in some detail already. Next, we’ll talk about the emerging tactics that take them to the next level.

AI Transforms the Fake Website Landscape 

Generative AI changes the game, altering every facet of the fake website ecosystem. Essentially, LLMs remove the traditional barriers to creating convincing fraudulent content on a landing page, an ad, or an email. These tools help scammers produce high-quality product descriptions, realistic images, and compelling marketing copy within seconds, rather than hours or days. In short, this development means that fake websites achieve levels of polish and authenticity that previously required professional design skills and significant time investment. 

Thanks to AI automation, the frequency and volume of fake websites exploded. Criminal organizations can now generate hundreds or thousands of unique fake website landing pages simultaneously, each tailored to specific products, demographics, or geographic regions. To promote these pages, AI-generated fake ads flood social media platforms, accumulating thousands of views and hundreds of clicks before platform moderators identify and remove them. Every click represents lost revenue for legitimate businesses, broken brand trust, and a customer who may never return to the authentic website again. 

Advanced Targeting Through Geo-Fenced Fake Websites 

It’s not just frequency and volume that make these threats so concerning. Modern fake websites employ sophisticated geo-fencing technology to display different content based on visitors’ geographic locations, making them harder to detect and enforce against. Location-aware fake shops specifically target industries where regional preferences and regulations open opportunities for deception. Financial services companies, particularly emerging fintech platforms, face constant threats from fake apps, investment scams, and websites that mimic their branding to steal login credentials and financial information. 

Retail sectors like luxury goods, fashion, automotive parts, and electronics firms also suffer particularly high volumes of geo-targeted fake website attacks. Criminals recognize that consumers in different regions enjoy varying levels of familiarity with specific brands, allowing them to customize their deception strategies accordingly. Enforcement challenges multiply when fake websites appear differently to investigators in one country compared to targeted consumers in another region. Variations and technical obstacles make it difficult for both authorities and internal brand protection teams to coordinate takedown efforts. In the wake of this trend, intelligence services become essential partners for brands seeking to identify and combat these advanced fake website operations. 

Device-Specific Fake Websites Exploit Mobile Vulnerabilities 

Besides geo-fencing their fake websites and phishing ads, scammers develop all kinds of tactics to evade authorities and brand protection teams. Scams increasingly target specific devices, most commonly appearing exclusively on mobile phones or tablets while remaining invisible to desktop users. This tactic exploits the fact that most consumers browse and shop on mobile devices, where smaller screens and touch interfaces make it harder to spot red flags.

Also, with payment systems built into our phones, shoppers can spot an ad, click on it, and pay for it with their face or fingertips in a couple of seconds flat. The scam strikes before we even have time for a second thought.

When internal teams attempt to investigate the reported website on their work computers, they often find nothing unusual. In some cases, they cannot access the fraudulent content at all. Brands need specialized, mobile-focused detection tools to fight these kinds of malicious campaigns. With a comprehensive multi-channel monitoring solution, brand protection specialists replicate genuine consumer browsing patterns across multiple device types and operating systems. 

Comprehensive Online Brand Protection Strategies 

Brand must defend themselves against these evolving tactics to protect their clients, and their revenue. For example, EBRAND Online Brand Protection solution combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human expertise to detect and combat fake websites across all relevant channels. The system continuously monitors the internet for unauthorized use of brand assets, suspicious domain registrations, and fraudulent websites that target specific customer segments or geographic regions. 

Our ARGOS platform employs advanced algorithms to identify fake websites that use sophisticated evasion techniques that traditional monitoring systems miss. The solution provides real-time alerts when new threats emerge and fast-tracks the takedown process. Minimizing the window of opportunity for criminals helps proactive organizations limit reputational damage and protect their consumers. If you want to get started right away, we also offer a free fake shops audit to uncover your current threat landscape, and see which fake website scams currently target your brand and your industry. 

Protecting Your Brand in the AI Era 

As we’ve discussed, AI helps criminals industrialize their fake websites, putting more pressure on brands to find a solution. Next-generation advertisement scams leverage geo-fencing, device targeting, and AI-generated content to evade detection while maximizing their impact. Unfortunately, legacy brand protection approaches struggle to grapple with these threats. Brand must instead explore comprehensive monitoring solutions that detect and mitigate across all digital channels. 

Modern fake website operations demand expert analysis and strategic response. Join us for our upcoming podcast discussion with Lisa Deegan and EM360, where we will explore cutting-edge brand protection strategies and the evolving role of artificial intelligence in both creating and combating fake shops going forward. 

The post How AI helps fake websites and fake shops trick their targets  appeared first on EBRAND.

Fake TikTok accounts cause impersonation, scams, and brand damage. Users should promptly report impersonation or fraudulent activity through TikTok’s reporting tools and monitor outcomes. Leveraging proactive digital risk protection helps detect and respond to fake accounts early, protecting brand reputation and user safety. 

TikTok dominates our screens as a popular social media platforms, attracting millions of users and brands worldwide. Along with its growth, fake accounts have become a serious issue, leading to impersonation, scams, and counterfeit promotions. These accounts can damage reputations, mislead users, and even put personal safety at risk. Knowing how to report a fake TikTok account is crucial for protecting yourself and maintaining a safe and genuine platform. You can also get a free TikTok impersonation audit to check for active brand impersonations right here.

Why Fake Accounts on TikTok Are a Serious Problem 

Fake accounts can impersonate individuals, influencers, or brands on TikTok. Some accounts operate as scams, designed to collect personal information, while others attempt to sell counterfeit products or promote fraudulent content. When someone pretends to be someone else, it can harm reputations and mislead followers. For businesses, fake accounts can damage trust, misrepresent products, and create confusion among customers. TikTok allows members to take action by reporting these accounts to prevent further harm and protect the community. 

Understanding the Community Guidelines for Fake TikTok Account 

TikTok’s community guidelines prohibit impersonation, fraud, and scams. Any account acting as another user, posting counterfeit content, or engaging in fraudulent behavior is in violation of these policies. When users report an account, the platform’s team reviews the case to determine whether the account should be removed. TikTok takes these reports seriously, but users must provide accurate details when submitting reports so that the platform can effectively evaluate and respond accordingly. 

How to Locate and Use the Report Option on TikTok 

The TikTok app makes it simple to report a fake account directly. To begin, visit the account you want to report and tap the share button in the upper-right corner of the profile page. From there, choose the “Report” option. It will guide you through a step-by-step process to select the reason you are reporting. If the account is impersonating someone else or engaging in fraudulent activity, please provide this information. Users can also report inappropriate content posted in a video, following the same process within the app. 

Selecting the Type of Report 

When reporting an account, TikTok offers several options. If the account is impersonating someone else, choose impersonation. If the issue involves a scam, fraud, or counterfeit posting, select the corresponding category. For accounts impersonating a brand, you may need to provide additional details about trademarks or copyrighted content. TikTok allows you to block the account simultaneously, which prevents further contact while the team evaluates the report. 

Submitting a Copyright or Trademark Infringement Form 

Brands and creators facing impersonation or counterfeit content may need to submit a copyright or trademark infringement form through TikTok’s website. This process requires you to provide specific details about your intellectual property and how it is being misused. TikTok’s policy ensures that only genuine claims are considered. Including accurate information is crucial when you’re reporting a fake TikTok account. For brands, this step is one of the most effective ways to report an account that violates trademark or copyright rights. 

Monitoring Your Report on TikTok 

Once you submit a report, TikTok’s team reviews the account and decides whether action should be taken. Users may be notified directly in the app about the outcome. If the report reveals a violation, it will take action by removing content or suspending the account. In some cases, if no violation is found, the account may remain active. Monitoring your report ensures you stay updated on the progress, and you can always reach out to TikTok support if further contact is necessary. 

Understanding TikTok’s Limitations on Counterfeit Protection 

While TikTok offers tools to report fake accounts and counterfeit content, it does have limitations. TikTok’s community guidelines allow for the removal of clear cases of impersonation or fraud, but not every case can be resolved immediately. Some accounts may continue to misbehave until more reports are submitted or additional review is conducted. This limitation means users and brands must remain proactive to ensure safety on the platform. 

Proactive Monitoring for a Fake TikTok Account 

Staying safe on TikTok requires regular monitoring and vigilance. Users should actively search for accounts pretending to be them and learn how to recognize counterfeit activity—brands on TikTok benefit from having a team or system in place to detect impersonation quickly. Proactive monitoring not only prevents fraud but also helps maintain trust with followers. Updating security settings and blocking suspicious accounts is another helpful way to reduce risks. To stay ahead of online threats, many organizations enhance their protection with Digital Risk Protection services that actively monitor social media platforms, detect fraudulent or deceptive accounts early, and deliver timely alerts to safeguard brand reputation. 

Next Steps for Protecting Your Brand 

Protecting your reputation online requires ongoing effort. Brands and users alike should utilize TikTok’s settings to limit unwanted contact, review accounts that appear suspicious, and promptly report fake accounts as soon as they are detected. If necessary, contact TikTok directly for additional support, especially when dealing with impersonation that could harm your reputation. TikTok allows reporting on behalf of someone else, ensuring that friends, followers, and business partners can also assist. Acting quickly and submitting detailed reports helps keep the platform safe and genuine. 

Conclusion: Tackling a Fake TikTok Account for Good

Learning how to report a fake account is one of the most effective ways to keep the platform safe and secure. Whether you are a user protecting your identity or a brand preventing fraud and counterfeit activity, taking immediate action helps TikTok’s staff remove harmful accounts. By reporting violations, monitoring reports, and proactively watching for suspicious activity, you help create a safer social media environment where genuine content thrives. 

The post How to Report a Fake TikTok Account  appeared first on EBRAND.

Online brand protection isn’t just about detecting infringements: It’s about eliminating them. The proliferation of rogue websites, counterfeit marketplace listings, deceptive mobile apps, and infringing social media accounts is a growing challenge for brand owners. These bad actors exploit the digital ecosystem’s scale and speed to monetize brand equity illegally and erode consumer trust. With the amount of attack surfaces and impersonation tactics on the market, businesses must consider multi-channel brand protection to stay safe online. 

Effective enforcement, meaning permanent takedowns, not just temporary disruption, forms the linchpin of any successful brand protection strategy. With stakes higher than ever, brands need an intelligent, coordinated, and proactive approach to ensure bad actors are not only stopped but kept offline. We’ll break these trends down below to equip your businesses, but you can also get a free brand protection audit right here.

The Expanding Frontier of Digital Threats 

1. Marketplaces: The Counterfeit Playground 

Online marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba, Mercado Libre, and eBay have democratized commerce. But they’ve also become fertile ground for counterfeiters. These sellers often operate behind layers of anonymity, rapidly launching new listings after old ones are removed. Enforcement efforts that rely solely on whack-a-mole takedowns are inefficient and short-lived. 

2. Social Media: The Weaponization of Trust 

Posts across social platforms – like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook – increasingly promote and sell counterfeit or infringing goods. Worse, influencers are sometimes co-opted to unwittingly promote fake products. Because these platforms thrive on rapid content creation and virality, infringements spread faster than traditional enforcement can catch.

Social media landscapes vary drastically from region to region and even minute to minute, as consumers scroll through personalized platforms, feeds, and networks. Businesses need a comprehensive multi-channel brand protection approach if they have any hope of detecting and removing infringements from platforms as diverse as TikTok Shop, LinkedIn, and Weibo.

3. Mobile Apps: A Trojan Horse for Infringement 

Rogue mobile apps masquerading as official brand experiences deceive users, phish credentials, or sell counterfeit products directly. Scammers often host these apps on legitimate app stores or sideloaded third-party repositories, making detection and enforcement technically challenging. 

4. Rogue Websites: Persistent and Evasive 

Infringing websites use lookalike domains, brand impersonation, and SEO manipulation to divert traffic from legitimate sites. Many are supported by affiliate marketing schemes or exploit loopholes in domain registries to reappear under different names after takedown. 

The Missing Link: Coordinated and Permanent Multi-Channel Brand Protection Enforcement 

Detection without enforcement is like diagnosing a disease without treatment. 

Temporary removals may provide short-term relief, but they do little to deter sophisticated infringers. The ultimate goal must be permanent suspension – the removal of not just the content, but the infrastructure that supports repeat offenses. 

Effective enforcement should include: 

• Cross-platform intelligence: Linking social accounts to marketplace listings and rogue domains through shared infrastructure (IP, email, wallets). 

• Root-cause targeting: Focusing on operators behind the infringement, not just their output. 

• Automated yet customized enforcement workflows: Scalable and tactical action plans tailored to each platform’s reporting mechanisms. 

• Escalation frameworks: Legal escalation, registrar complaints, and law enforcement referrals where necessary. 

Enforcement That Lasts: The New Standard in Multi-Channel Brand Protection

Digital brand protection must evolve from a reactive checklist to a resilient strategy. Brands can no longer afford to treat takedowns as victories – they must treat non-recurrence as the true success metric. That means embracing technology, building partnerships with platforms and registrars, and investing in holistic enforcement workflows. 

At EBRAND, we’re setting a new standard for digital enforcement – where bad actors don’t just hide, they disappear. 

Ready to Protect What You’ve Built? 

The future of brand protection belongs to those who act decisively today. If you’re ready to move beyond takedowns and toward permanent solutions, get in touch with EBRAND. Let’s build a brand defense strategy that doesn’t just fight infringements – it ends them. Start now with a free business brand protection audit.

The post Why Multi-Channel Brand Protection is No Longer Optional    appeared first on EBRAND.

These rogue websites exist solely to steal credentials, drain bank accounts, and trick unsuspecting employees, consumers, and partners. They erode trust, devastate brands, and inflict massive financial losses.  

In this guide, we’ll dissect the top five tactics to target US businesses with fake webpages. You can also check which rogue websites are spoofing your organization for free right here.

What Exactly is a Rogue Website? 

The term “Rogue websites” covers malicious and fraudulent web pages that impersonate legitimate brands, services, or individuals. Websites go rogue when cybercriminals exploit lax domain registration processes to secure deceptive URLs (e.g., amaz0n-support.com or microsoft-security-alert.net). They use tactics like typosquatting (common misspellings), homograph attacks (using similar-looking characters), and hijacked subdomains to secure deceptive infrastructure. Once registered, they build their fake pages with nuanced and specific strategies to trick their targets. These strategies often look like fake shops that imitate retailers or fake login pages to impersonate banks. Increasingly, they’re so effective in their impersonations that even digital authorities like ICANN can no longer tell which is which. 

Cybercriminals dress their rogue websites in stolen logos, brand colors, and AI-generated copy that mirrors legitimate communications. Deceptive landing pages often leverage SSL certificates (showing the “padlock” icon) to appear secure, exploiting user trust. Once live, they slowly and steadily implement scams and cybercrimes like fraud, counterfeiting, and data theft.  

Below, we’ll outline the five most common and most dangerous rogue website use cases.  

Tactic 1: Fake Login Pages + Phishing Emails 

The most devastating rogue website attacks occur right at the start of your digital journey: your inbox and your login page. Attackers deploy deceptive pages that mimic login portals across the internet. They spoof customer login pages, and internal platforms like VPN access or payroll systems. Crucially, scammers stack their assets to maximize their impact. Hosting an email server and a rogue website on the same domain, and promoting the page with the relevant email, creates a brutally effective attack.  

Hosting customer accounts and colleague services unlocks all kinds of business benefits. Many companies run these kinds of login pages for security and control. However, they often neglect their potential as an attack surface. Scammers recently hosted fake login pages for platforms like Netflix that were so convincing that authorities had to step in.   

A single compromised credential can lead to data breaches, ransomware, and regulatory penalties. Armed with the latest high-powered and out-of-the-box phish kits like Darcula 3.0, amateur and organized cybercriminals alike have your infrastructure in their sights. Secure organizations must take steps to detect suspicious domains, especially those lookalike pages and active mail servers.  

Tactic 2: Promotions & Product Launches on Rogue Websites

Scammers exploit the hype around product drops, sales, or investments by creating rogue websites that impersonate well-known brands. Worse, they impersonate CEOs and celebrities on social media to leverage big names and lucrative reputations. Fake tweets or LinkedIn posts drive traffic to scam sites selling nonexistent products, “exclusive” NFTs, or fraudulent investments. These rogue websites use polished designs, fake countdown timers, and stolen media to appear authentic.  

One scam follows another in these cases, compounding their impact in a cybercrime cascade. For example, this year, scammers impersonated a famous economist’s Twitter account. Their malicious campaign then tweeted a link to an entirely spoofed newspaper website. On the website, they hosted a detailed and persuasive article promoting a new cryptocurrency in the media outlet’s name. While platforms eventually remove these kinds of scams and impersonations, organizations must take their own action when it comes to removing the rogue website at the root of the problem.  

Within the broader issue of phishing, VIP impersonation runs rampant. Exploring VIP and Executive Protection solutions also helps organizations secure their online footprint, and protect their clients as well as their business leaders.  

Tactic 3: Fake Online Stores Exploiting Events 

Fake shops and counterfeit websites represent one of the most common rogue website threats for any brand selling products online. Whether you’re in food and beverages, luxury fashion, or auto parts, fake shop scammers can undercut your margins and trick your clients at every turn. Fraudulent sites impersonate legitimate stores, offering “too-good-to-be-true” discounts, exclusive launches, or liquidation sales. While they operate year-round, these scams seem to grab headlines during ecommerce surges like shopping seasons and major brand announcements, preying on urgency and consumer trust.  

For example, when craft retailer Joann faced financial struggles, scammers launched rogue websites posing as official “going-out-of-business” sales, tricking customers into entering payment details for non-existent products.  

 Similarly, during a recent holiday season, cybercriminals flooded search engines with fake online stores advertising “last-minute deals” on hot-ticket items like gaming consoles and designer goods, only to steal credit card details or never ship orders.  

Beyond financial losses, fake shops inflict severe brand damage, eroding consumer trust and flooding the market with counterfeit goods. They also violate intellectual property laws by illegally using trademarks, copyrighted images, and brand names.  

Tactic 4: Fake Support Pages on Rogue Websites

Nearly every business needs support teams, and scammers know it. Cybercriminals build rogue websites mimicking essential teams like IT support, helplines, or account management. Using stolen contact lists from breaches or dark web sales, they blast emails and communication channels with messages like these: “Your account is locked! Click here to restore access.” Victims land on fake support pages, where “agents” demand remote access or payment for “services.”  

SecurityWeek recently reported that these kinds of scams targeted all kinds of large US companies, from Apple to Bank of America. Ultimately, rogue website scams impersonating support teams absolutely demolish customer trust. Detecting and tracking rogue websites that impersonate any kind of support channel thereby creates an important foundation for your business relations and recurring revenue.  

Tactic 5: Rogue Supply Chain & Partner Portals 

Partnerships and reseller ecosystems take growth strategies to the next level, but they also expose some concerning vulnerabilities to rogue website attacks. Attackers impersonate trusted partners like suppliers, resellers, marketing agencies, or recruiters with fake websites portals for invoices, contracts, and project updates.   

In one recent scheme, scammers sent convincing phishing emails posing as Meta recruiters, directing victims to fraudulent domains where they were pressured into paying for “background checks” or “training fees.” The scam was highly coordinated, leveraging Meta’s reputation to exploit job seekers’ trust.  

The consequences extend far beyond financial loss. Fake recruitment portals erode trust in corporate hiring processes. For businesses, the solution requires more than reactive takedowns. These threats demand continuous domain monitoring, strict third-party verification protocols, and employee training to recognize these sophisticated deceptions.  

Conclusion: Don’t Let Rogue Websites Win 

To summarize, we’ve seen that these scams all use multi-channel, multimedia attacks to launch their rogue website campaign. When scams blend fake sites with email, social media, and even deepfakes, we must take a comprehensive approach to fighting back. It takes just one person clicking a link for these scams to strike. One distracted employee, customer, or partner can trigger financial loss, data theft, or reputational ruin.  

With the right strategy, you can hunt down impersonating domains, social accounts, and apps. Discover if your brand is being exploited right now with a Free Rogue Websites Audit. Our team will scan for impersonating domains, along with fake social profiles, and app store clones targeting your business. Protect your revenue, reputation, and customers today. 

The post Rogue Websites: The Top Five Most Dangerous Website Scams appeared first on EBRAND.

This guide dives deep into PPC brand protection, detailing strategies to shield your revenue and your reputation from online scammers. We examine why cybercriminals target paid ads, how even authorized resellers can turn rogue, and practical methods to detect impersonators across platforms. You can also get a free PPC brand protection audit right here.

How to Protect your Brand Across PPC Channels 

PPC brand protection means preventing unauthorized or malicious use of your brand in paid ads online. Ad channel brand protection tactics safeguard your intellectual property across platforms like Google Ads and Meta, encompassing Facebook and Instagram. With 65% of mid-sized companies leveraging PPC marketing, these platforms deliver immense value, but also attract sophisticated fraudsters.  

Scammers deploy calculated tactics to exploit your brand value. They bid on your exact brand keywords, pushing legitimate ads below counterfeit listings in search results. Leveraging powerful technical tools like CDNs, they also create fake websites with AI-generated text and stolen visuals, replicating your login pages to harvest credentials. These operations span search engines and social platforms, with Facebook and Instagram as prime targets for phishing schemes. Financial institutions, ecommerce brands, and tech companies face the highest risk due to their large customer bases.  

Why Scammers Attack Brands Through PPC 

Cybercriminals focus on PPC because it ambushes consumers during their most vulnerable moments. When users research products, they actively seek solutions. Scammers position fake promotions atop these results, intercepting traffic meant for legitimate brands.  

These scams thrive within trusted environments. On Instagram or Facebook, fraudulent ads blend seamlessly between family photos and friend updates. Users lower their guard when seeing familiar logos or “limited-time deals,” unaware they’re entering payment details on cloned pages. The illusion of credibility proves devastating; a fake ad bearing Google’s logo or a “Verified” badge tricks victims into submitting sensitive data before redirecting to polished phishing sites. Without any kinds of PPC brand protection tactics, the malicious campaigns appear, strike, and disappear before they even show up on the brand owner’s radar. 

Beyond Scammers: The Hidden Threat of Rogue Resellers 

While impersonators pose grave dangers, authorized partners can also undermine your PPC strategy. Consider, for example, that 95% of Microsoft’s revenue flows through its partner network. Legitimate resellers help brands break into new markets and drive sales. The affiliate marketing industry alone surged from $27.8 billion in 2023 to $32.3 billion in 2024, accounting for 6.25% of global e-commerce sales.  

That being said, this ecosystem also creates serious vulnerabilities. Some affiliates hijack your brand keywords, bidding on terms like “YourBrand + discount” to claim commissions for sales you would’ve made organically. Unauthorized sellers flood markets with counterfeit PPC campaigns, confusing customers with inferior products and undercutting prices. Without PPC brand protection, you lose control over pricing, messaging, and customer experience across your global markets.  

Business Cases for Protecting your Brand Against PPC Abuse

Besides simply tackling scammers and enforcing your IP, PPC brand protection delivers concrete benefits for organizations across industries. Let’s look at the mechanics of pay-per-click advertising: Each bid, and each competitor, raises the costs for each paid search term. Therefore, PPC brand abuse directly drains your marketing budget, by artificially inflating your key terms. Fraudulent advertisers bidding on your branded keywords force you to compete against impersonators, throwing money down the drain while losing out on traffic.

Compounding this waste of resources, scammers aggressively exploit paid advertising channels on lesser-known intermediary search engines, platforms often eager to take their revenue but less diligent in policing fraud upfront. This means your marketing budget potentially funds clicks that divert your customers to fake sites or competitors through these channels.

A lot of brand protection can be quite abstract and hard to trace the ROI in the short term. PPC brand protection presents the exception: Costs come down, malicious ad campaigns with thousands of impressions disappear from the internet, and your legitimate PPC pipeline enjoys a real boost. That being said, let’s get into the details about how to get started and protect your brand from PPC piracy.

How to Protect your Brand Across PPC Channels

Smaller brands often take a practical but limited approach to patrolling their channels for PPC brand protection: simply searching, and seeing what comes up. Marketing teams can search brand keywords daily on Google and Bing, adding modifiers like “login” or “coupon” to uncover impersonators. Each suspicious landing page requires meticulous inspection for subtle typos in domains, such as “YourBrandd[.]com” instead of your authentic URL. This process typically consumes hours or days every week, while missing the vast majority of the fake ads. Even when you detect one, the flagging, tracking, and takedown processes require the same time investment all over again.

Automated Online Brand Protection platforms deliver scalable solutions. These tools integrate directly with Google Ads and Meta Ads data feeds, continuously scanning global campaigns. You configure your protected assets, like logos, product images, slogans, and keywords, enabling AI algorithms to detect infringements across thousands of ads hourly. Advanced systems rank threats by severity, track repeat offenders, and streamline takedowns for rapid and effective resolution.

Conclusions: Get Started with PPC Brand Protection

PPC brand protection is non-negotiable in today’s adversarial digital landscape. Scammers exploit paid channels to steal revenue and erode trust, while rogue affiliates divert hard-won conversions. Proactive monitoring combined with automated enforcement lets brands secure their advertising real estate, protect customers, and preserve market integrity.  

Begin your defense with a free PPC brand protection audit. Our experts scan your branded keywords across Google, Meta, and more, identifying active threats and impersonators. You’ll receive a prioritized action plan within 48 hours, with no obligations.  

What is PPC brand protection? From fake adds and cyberscammers to rogue resellers and phishing pages, find out how to protect your brand.

The post What is PPC Brand Protection? appeared first on EBRAND.

AI should deliver value. Beyond creating shiny marketing material, let’s explore some real use cases with practical and measurable benefits for your brand. Let’s also explore Deep Vision, EBRAND’s new AI-powered detection engine that brings clarity to online brand protection. This isn’t just another image recognition tool. As we’ll discuss, Deep Vision combines optical character recognition (OCR), contextual analysis, and feature matching to find what others miss. Whether it’s a counterfeit listing with your logo removed or a second-hand sale pretending to be new, Deep Vision sees through it—and lets you act. 

1. Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Reading what others miss 

Online listings don’t always include obvious brand names or trademarks. Counterfeiters strip logos from images, or crop photos just enough to avoid detection. An effective OCR engine scans inside image and reads embedded text, using AI contextual analysis to detect evasive infringements. With Deep Vision’s recognition engine, your searches deliver results, even when the logo or the text isn’t indexed or immediately visible. This means you can find infringements that traditional keyword systems completely overlook. 

With Deep Vision, if someone removes your logo from a box but leaves clues in the background, we’ll spot it. Our OCR doesn’t just read—it interprets context. That gives your enforcement team a decisive edge. 

2. Context-aware AI: Find your product without the keywords 

A plush toy listed as “soft animal” might never show up in your old keyword-based systems. But Deep Vision understands context. Its AI models detect products based on sentiment, texture, and object-level features—not just metadata. 

Search for “purple plush toy,” and Deep Vision will show you images that match that concept, even if the title says nothing of the sort. It bridges the gap between what a product looks like and how it’s described, making detection more human—and more effective. 

3. Image uploads: Match products, no matter the angle 

Brand owners can now upload images of their own products into Deep Vision. The system then scans online listings to detect visual matches, even if the orientation, lighting, or background has changed. 

This is especially powerful when counterfeiters slightly adjust images to avoid detection. Unlike basic reverse image tools, Deep Vision looks deeper, recognizing a product even when it’s been flipped, rotated, or edited. 

4. Segmentation: Focus on what matters 

Sometimes you don’t need to match a whole image—you just need to check the logo placement, or packaging style. Deep Vision’s segmentation tool lets you highlight a region within an image as your reference point. That region then becomes the focus of the search. 

This feature feeds into a broader risk scoring mechanism, helping your team prioritize high-risk matches and act quickly. It’s precise. It’s fast. And it’s powered by AI tuned for enforcement. 

5. Multilingual search: AI without translation gaps 

Traditionally, you needed to translate keywords into dozens of languages to cover global marketplaces like eBay or AliBaba. Deep Vision changes that. It supports image and context-based detection across languages, letting you search in one language and still surface relevant listings everywhere. 

For brand protection teams spread across regions, this means massive time savings—and stronger global coverage. 

6. Categorisation by product type and condition 

Counterfeits aren’t just new. They’re often disguised as “used,” or resold as “refurbished.” Deep Vision uses AI to detect visual signals that indicate whether a product is new, used, or repackaged—based solely on image data. 

That insight is crucial when enforcing resale policies or tackling grey market activity. You can now distinguish between a legitimate used listing and a counterfeit falsely labelled as pre-owned. 

7. Advanced image similarity: Beyond basic matching 

Deep Vision’s image similarity engine goes well beyond reverse search. It compares uploaded images using dense vector models that assess structure, shape, and visual features on multiple levels. 

This allows for detection of items that look similar—even when they aren’t exact copies. We combine smart feature matching technology to give you a fuller picture of infringing activity. For spotting subtle copycats or near-duplicates, this AI system leads the pack. 

8. Integration with cybersecurity and risk protection 

Deep Vision doesn’t work in isolation. It feeds data into our ARGOS platform, linking visual detections with keyword signals, domain intelligence, and identity strings. We blend this data with insights from our Digital Risk Protection platform to match brand variations and string deviations—closing the loop between visual, textual, and behavioural signals. 

The result is a smarter, more comprehensive brand protection system, that’ll deliver the insights you need to detect and eliminate online infringements.

Conclusions: Turning AI into valuable brand protection 

Too many providers talk about AI like it’s magic. We don’t. We show you what it can do in real terms—and then we use it to solve real problems. Deep Vision is designed to pull AI out of the black box and put it in your hands. 

Want to see what it actually does? We’ll show you. 

You’ve now seen the tactics, and the tools. Deep Vision is live, and already uncovering threats other systems miss. It’s time to apply this technology to your brand. We’ll start with a free audit —powered by Deep Vision—and explore exactly how counterfeiters are targeting your products online. 

Let’s expose them, together. 

The post Deep Vision: How AI Changes the Online Brand Protection Game appeared first on EBRAND.

As Ayrton Senna, one of the greatest drivers in Formula 1 history, famously said: “You cannot overtake 15 cars in sunny weather… but you can when it’s raining.”

Right now, we’re in the rain. From geopolitical instability and inflation to shifting trade rules and tariffs, supply chain bottlenecks, and rising cyber threats, the global business climate is anything but stable. Due to economic pressures, consumers make an effort to look for best bargains and more often consider buying counterfeits or look-alikes. And in that instability lies opportunity – for brands that stay visible, vigilant, and protected.

The high cost of doing nothing – or of doing too little

When counterfeiters, scammers, and bad actors become more active during downturns, the greatest risk isn’t action – it’s inaction. And that risk is no longer theoretical.

According to the EUIPO, counterfeit spirits and wine alone account for more than €1.3 billion in lost annual sales across the EU. That’s 3.3% of the sector’s entire revenue base – without even considering imports or losses from counterfeiting in non – EU markets. Add in broader impacts on the economy and government revenue, and the total climbs to €3 billion in losses and over 23,000 jobs affected. And this is just one industry.

Across sectors – from electronics to fashion, from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics – the share of counterfeits can reach up to or sometimes more than 10% of the total market. These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re part of vast, coordinated criminal networks operating across marketplaces, social media, and private messaging platforms.

Doing nothing doesn’t protect your brand. It invites erosion  –  of revenue, reputation, and trust.

How protecting brands helps grow your business

In uncertain times, the best brands don’t just hold the line – they double down on clarity, control, and customer trust. At EBRAND, we help companies take that step forward with an integrated approach to brand protection, digital risk monitoring, and domain management.

It’s not about reaction. It’s about strategy.

Our Online Brand Protection platform, powered by ARGOS, goes far beyond simple takedowns. We conduct deep – dive investigations into large – scale infringement operations – identifying clusters of counterfeit sellers, uncovering patterns, and connecting the dots across websites, seller accounts, and even logistics networks. This lets our clients target the source, not just the symptoms.

Rather than chasing thousands of low-level sellers, we’re protecting brands by focusing on the real damage: the repeat offenders, the large – scale counterfeit networks, and the organized operators behind global revenue loss.

We work closely with legal teams, platforms, and local enforcement authorities to bring meaningful enforcement action – not just delisting, but sustained disruption.

Digital risk is business risk

Meanwhile, the digital threat landscape is becoming increasingly aggressive – and increasingly invisible.

With our Digital Risk Protection solution X-RAY, EBRAND scans the surface web, deep web, and dark web for threats that impact brand reputation, consumer safety, and executive security. That includes phishing sites, impersonation attacks, leaked credentials, and fraud rings operating across encrypted platforms like Telegram or private Discord servers.

What sets our approach apart is contextual intelligence. Instead of flagging isolated threats, we identify relationships – clusters of phishing campaigns, coordinated misinformation attacks, or impersonation activity that spans channels. You get real – time alerts, clear attribution, and the ability to prioritize threats that matter most to your business and your customers.

Owning the digital front line

It’s easy to overlook your domain portfolio when budgets are tight. But for many brands, their domain strategy is the first line of defense – and a critical asset that underpins global operations.

Our Corporate Domain Management service gives businesses the structure and oversight needed to secure digital perimeters. That means consolidating domain holdings across markets, protecting against DNS hijacking, and monitoring for abuse at scale. In an environment where impersonation and cybersquatting can spark brand and legal crises overnight, these aren’t IT tasks – they’re business – critical.

We also support clients during M&A, product launches, and geographic expansion to ensure their digital assets reflect their strategy – securely and efficiently.

Overtaking in the rain: Protecting brands in market turmoil

The real opportunity of tough times isn’t in playing defense – it’s in playing smarter. While others hesitate, resilient brands invest in visibility, resilience, and control. And when the market rebounds, they’re already in front.

At EBRAND, we help businesses take the lead in protecting brands when others are just trying to stay on track:

• By monitoring risk across the visible and invisible web with real – time intelligence
• By investigating complex infringement networks and removing them at the root
• By defending digital territory with comprehensive, global solutions, supported by local experts

The brands that will grow in the next decade are those who protect what matters – not when the skies clear, but while the storm is still overhead.

The post “You can when it’s raining” – Protecting brands in market turmoil appeared first on EBRAND.

A test purchase delivers critical evidence in the fight against counterfeiters. It enables brands to gather concrete proof of infringements, verify the authenticity of products, and take decisive action against scammers and cybercriminals. While the concept may seem straightforward, executing an effective test purchase strategy demands time, resources, and expertise, so let’s get into it.   

In this article, we’ll explore how a test purchase works, its pros and cons, and the role it plays in intelligence and investigation strategies that protect your brand.  

What are Test Purchases, and Why Do They Matter? 

Picture this: you discover a suspicious listing on Amazon. The seller offers your product at a fraction of the price, and you don’t recognize them as an authorized reseller. What’s your next step? Without concrete evidence, it’s hard to take decisive action. To gather the required evidence, you may need to make a test purchase.   

A test purchase involves buying the product in question to verify its authenticity. Once the product arrives, you carefully inspect it for signs of counterfeiting, such as poor quality, missing branding, or incorrect packaging. This process not only confirms whether the product is fake but also provides the evidence you need to take legal action, enforce reseller policies, or request platform takedowns.   

The Complexities of Test Purchases

Test purchases offer undeniable benefits for brands looking to protect their intellectual property and revenue. One of the most significant advantages lies in its ability to provide irrefutable physical evidence. Whether you build a case for litigation or submit a takedown request to an online marketplace, having a material counterfeit product in hand strengthens your position. Additionally, a test purchase helps you identify the source of counterfeit goods, supporting broader enforcement actions against manufacturers and distributors.  These kinds of insights lay the foundations for the next steps in your enforcement actions, including litigation and physical raids that bring counterfeiters and infringers to justice. 

However, the tactic also presents drawbacks and challenges. Firstly, it requires you to give a small amount of money to the scammers themselves, funding their operation. This sacrifice, however frustrating, ultimately delivers the evidence you need to take them down.  

Beyond that, an effective test purchase requires significant time and resources. You must identify suspicious listings, place orders, and meticulously document each step of the process. Throughout this process, buyers must remain anonymous and avoid detection by the seller, otherwise they might switch out their usual counterfeits for legitimate products, or cancel the sale altogether. For businesses with limited internal capacity, this process overwhelms even the most dedicated teams. Counterfeiters often operate across multiple platforms and regions, making it difficult to scale test purchase efforts without support. Gathering the right evidence means negotiating with the complexity of regional differences and local expertise on a global scale. 

How Test Purchases Fit into Comprehensive Brand Protection Strategies 

While a test purchase proves powerful, the tactic represents just one piece of the puzzle. A truly effective Online Brand Protection strategy combines a test purchase with advanced detection tools, legal expertise, and enforcement capabilities.   

For example, innovative monitoring tools can scan platforms like Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop, and even standalone webstores for suspicious activity. Once you identify potential counterfeiters, you can use a test purchase to verify the infringement. From there, legal teams can take action, whether they send cease-and-desist letters, file lawsuits, or work with law enforcement.   

This multi-layered approach ensures that you not only detect counterfeiters but also take decisive action to stop them.   

Why Most Brands Cannot Do It Alone 

The reality is that most businesses lack the time and resources to manage a test purchase and broader Online Brand Protection. Identifying counterfeiters, conducting a test purchase without being noticed, and pursuing legal action requires a complex and time-consuming process. Successful test purchases even require buyers to go undercover, and conduct covert communications with the seller to coordinate the delivery. This illicit back-and-forth requires far too much time for a busy, product-focussed brand manager. For some, you need also to register yourself in the portal of the counterfeiters, which presents serious obstacles for business-to-business test purchases. Brand managers may not want to register and contact details or login information with the counterfeiters themselves, thereby requiring third-party support to gather the “smoking gun,” infringement-wise.  

This is where partnering with a comprehensive OBP service proves invaluable. These services combine cutting-edge detection tools with seasoned investigators and legal experts, ensuring that every step—from a test purchase to litigation—is handled efficiently and effectively.   

Conclusion: Take Action to Protect Your Brand 

Counterfeiters and scammers pose a persistent threat, but with the right tools and strategies, you can protect your brand and revenue. B2B or B2C test purchases serve as a critical component of this effort, providing the evidence you need to enforce your rights and take action against bad actors.   

However, managing a test purchase and broader Online Brand Protection efforts can feel overwhelming. That’s why partnering with experts who handle the heavy lifting for you becomes essential.   

Ready to take the next step? Start with a free brand audit to uncover counterfeiters and scammers exploiting your brand. And if you need offline investigation support, get in touch with Arkadiusz, a seasoned counterfeit investigator, to strengthen your enforcement efforts.   

Don’t let counterfeiters damage your brand—act now to secure your reputation and your revenue. 

The post Test Purchases: The Proof Is in the Package appeared first on EBRAND.

However, this rapid growth comes with significant risks for brands. From counterfeit products and fake listings to CEO impersonations and ad scams, TikTok Shop’s fast-paced environment has become a breeding ground for fraudulent activity. In this blog post, we’ll explore the risks brands face on TikTok Shop, the types of scams proliferating on the platform, and actionable steps to protect your brand and consumers.  

What Is TikTok Shop? 

TikTok Shop is a social commerce platform that allows users to discover and purchase products directly within the TikTok app. It quickly gained traction in the U.S. since its launch, with over 500,000 merchants at the end of 2023, as Bloomberg reporting shows. The platform thrives on influencer marketing, content-driven trends, and seamless integrations, making it a go-to destination for younger consumers. In fact, 44% of TikTok users make purchases directly on the platform, a far higher percentage than other social media channels in the United States.  

Of course, TikTok Shop also thrives in other markets beyond the US. UK consumers accessed the in-app shopping options as early as 2023, before the app debuted to the EU market by expanding into Ireland. TikTok Shop then grew again, rolling out to the Spanish market and planting the seeds for further expansion across mainland Europe. They recently announced plans to setup shop in Germany, but the official launch date remains unclear. Meanwhile, TikTok is already posting commerce-related job openings in Amsterdam, Paris, and Milan—three markets where it has yet to launch— suggesting that their growth roadmap extends across the continent.  

This growth makes it hard for brands and brand managers to keep pace. TikTok Shop unleashes millions of shoppers in some markets and not others, using a variety of partnerships that in a network that evolves and meanders with alarming frequency. Such dynamism and flux makes it hard to detect scams and infringements involving your brand, let along take them down.  

The Risks of TikTok Shop: Scams Targeting Brands and Consumers 

TikTok shop’s rapid growth often outpaces the platform’s ability to regulate fraudulent activity effectively. The pace and recency also limits any long-term research around scams and brand risks on the platform. That being said, recent testimonies and reports highlight several alarming trends.  

Counterfeit Products and Fake Listings 

Counterfeit goods present one of the most pervasive issues on TikTok Shop. Scammers leverage established brand reputations to sell fake products, often at lower prices than the retail value. Crucially, counterfeit products skirt around health codes, worker rights, and environmental regulations, dealing untold harm around the world. The lack of health regulations proves particularly dangerous in the wellness, and beauty sectors, where counterfeit consumables like vitamin pills and perfumes pose serious risks. According to Forbes, 81% of TikTok Shop sales in the U.S. are in the beauty and health categories, placing toxic counterfeits in close proximity to the bodies of consumers.  

CEO Impersonation Scams 

AI-generated deepfakes and impersonations are on the rise, with scammers using fake videos of CEOs and brand representatives to deceive consumers. In one heartbreaking case, a couple lost their life savings—tens of thousands of dollars—after falling victim to a TikTok Shop scam involving endorsements from a fraudulent reseller. Such scams not only harm consumers but also damage brand reputations. You can also find out more about impersonation scams and the power of facial recognition on social media in our dedicated guide. 

Ad Scams and Fake Social Media Networks 

Scammers create entire networks of fake social media accounts and ads to impersonate brands and siphon off their e-commerce base. These fake ads prove particularly devastating during high-traffic shopping events like Black Friday, where consumers often make impulsive purchases.   

How Brands Protect Themselves on TikTok Shop 

Protecting your brand on TikTok Shop requires a proactive and multi-faceted approach. Here, we’ve listed three common strategies that brands can use for themselves to protect consumers and ecommerce revenues.  

Monitoring and Searching for Infringements 

Brands should actively search TikTok Shop for counterfeit listings, misleading ads, and unauthorized use of their intellectual property. While manual monitoring remains an option, it requires significant time and resources. Scammers frequently adapt their tactics, making it essential for brands to conduct regular searches and stay vigilant against emerging threats.  

Submitting Takedown Requests 

When brands identify infringements, they should submit takedown requests directly to TikTok. However, the platform’s enforcement process can be slow due to the high volume of content, users, and transactions. Brands must implement persistent monitoring and swift reporting to minimize brand damage. Delays allow counterfeiters to continue selling unauthorized products, threatening consumers and slashing ecommerce revenue. 

Leveraging Online Brand Protection Solutions 

To enhance enforcement efforts and remove the strain of manual detections and enforcement from their own teams, brands also rely on Online Brand Protection. These solutions automate your detection tools to identify and track fraudulent listings. Effective Online Brand Protection ensures swift action across TikTok Shop and other digital platforms. By leveraging scalable enforcement solutions, brands efficiently remove unauthorized sellers, protect consumer trust, and deter future infringements.  

As TikTok Shop expands into new markets, brands need to strengthen their online protection strategies to address the emerging risks. Counterfeit listings, misleading ads, and unauthorized sellers can quickly damage brand reputation and deceive consumers. However, effective brand protection goes beyond monitoring and enforcing your infringements on TikTok Shop alone. 

Next: TikTok Shop and Your Online Brand Protection Strategy 

A comprehensive strategy must cover a wide range of digital threats across the digital landscape. With EBRAND’s Argos platform, for example, you’ll unlock detections and takedown actions across TikTok Shop, Instagram, and Facebook. You’ll also get a handle on counterfeit sales on ecommerce marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, and AliExpress.  

Counterfeits and infringement scams also proliferate across fake shops and online marketplaces, so your brands need insights and actions there too. Argos lets you monitor fraudulent shopping websites impersonating official stores, along with unauthorized mobile apps on the App Store and Google Play, and even video-based scams on YouTube. With a multi-channel approach, brands proactively detect and enforce against threats wherever they appear, ensuring consistent protection across the entire digital landscape.  

Final Thoughts 

TikTok Shop offers immense opportunities for brands to connect with consumers, but it also presents significant risks. By staying vigilant and leveraging the right tools, you can protect your brand and consumers from scams and infringements.  

Want to know if your brand is being targeted on TikTok Shop? Get a free brand audit today and take the first step toward safeguarding your reputation. 

The post TikTok Shop Scams: Brands Under Threat appeared first on EBRAND.