In this report for MarkMonitor, I look at  the overall trends for 2008. We found that con artists are continuing to mature and sharpen their business practices as they hijack well-known brands for their own profit. Fully 80 percent of the abusive domains that we identified in our first study, in 2007, were still live during our study period and brandjackers continue to use cybersquatting as their tool of choice. Phishing attacks increased in the last quarter of 2008,
particularly targeted at financial sites.

It is called the Brandjacking Index and measures how pervasive these attacks are and to identify the potential threats to the world’s strongest brands.