Following the earthquake in Haiti, the outpouring of aid from all over the world has been overwhelming; everything from personal donations and fundraising, to giving blood and supplies. People from all walks of life have been doing whatever they can to help those in need following the tragedy. Unfortunately, along with bringing out the good, it has drawn out the bad too, with some people willing to shamelessly take advantage of other people's generosity.

With so many of us wanting to give money to aid organisations online, the inevitable fraudsters started to register domain names similar to official aid sites, and mimic legitimate organisations asking for peoples monetary donations. These people are capable of siphoning off huge amounts of money, which would have otherwise gone towards saving lives.

Not being the type to stand for it, savvy Domainers everywhere started to snap up all of the domain names similar to Red Cross, Oxfam, UNICEF, and other donation sites, as well as many common typos and search terms. Some individuals went as far as spending hundreds of dollars to keep these names out of the hands of scammers and thieves. The second they were in the possession of the name, they quickly engaged web forwarding, a service allowing the owner to point their domain at another website or IP address, seamlessly directing traffic to the official donation sites.

Even Google got in on the effort, snapping up haitiearthquake.com as their own donation site, giving money to various charities helping the earthquake victims.

Domainers dedicated time to scouring EBay and other auction sites, reporting dozens of auctions where domain names relating to Haiti were being sold for huge profits, allowing people to use them to their own personal advantage.

Potentially, a huge amount of money was kept out of the hands of fraudsters by the Domaining Community. They made sure that lots more traffic, and cash, was successfully directed to the correct pages, instead of into the pockets of fraudsters. And this isn't the first time that the Domaining Community have endeavoured to keep our donations safe. Similar schemes were run after Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech Shootings, to ensure that people's generous contributions ended up in the correct hands. Further proof that a domain name is a powerful tool!

It is an unfortunate fact of life that internet scamming is on the rise, and businesses must do all they can to protect their brand online. If someone is going to try and imitate your business the first thing they will do is register a domain similar to yours, and establish a web presence using that name. Wherever possible, keep your reputation safe by registering your brand name in as many different TLDs as possible, before someone else does!