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Do You Own Your Name?

If Someone Else Owns Your Name, Your Reputation May Be At Risk

How can someone else own your name? Well first off, we aren’t talking about any of your domain names – we’re talking about your name. It may be obvious, but your name identifies who you are. It’s on your checks, your mail and anything else that identifies you in the physical world.

In the digital world, your name is part of your online identity as well. You may put it under your blog and forum posts, in your email signature and on your website. We work hard to build a positive personal identity online, especially if it relates to our business. In today’s web 2.0 environment of Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other social and even viral networking, maintaining your good reputation is vital to your business.

That’s why it’s so important to own your name as a domain name. If your name is John Smith, and someone registered your name as johnsmith.com, they can put up whatever site they want. This could be another real person that has the same name as you, John Smith. They simply got to the domain before you and put up a personal website. In this case, there is less reason for concern. The other Mr. Smith is just doing his thing on the web and it’s clear he’s not you.

On the other hand, what if johnsmith.com is used for illegal music, video or software sharing, porn, or spamming? That could be a problem. Which do you think is the worst of that list? Many of you may say porn, but for someone with an internet marketing or ecommerce business, it’s really spamming. It could involve email spamming, comment spamming on forums or blogs, search engine abuse or another violation of a company’s terms of service.

If you wrongfully become associated with this activity, it can cause you a lot of headaches. It can take months to build a good online reputation and a good rapport with your customers. It can take only days to destroy it. Someone trying to make a quick buck piggybacking on your reputation can kill your business. This is not just with your customers, but potentially with companies that provide you services as well.

To be clear, we’re not talking about identity theft here. This is far easier. This is someone either masquerading as you to steal some of your business or someone just using the domain for their questionable dealings. While a simple WHOIS search will show anyone this site’s true owner, not many people know to look there.

So what can you do about this? The answer is actually quite simple. Buy your name as at least a ‘.com’ domain name. Even if you never use it, that is the only way to really protect it. Grab your name as a domain name today. Visit NameCheap to do it

[they have the best prices 🙂 ].

Have you had any experiences with someone trying to ride your coattails or unintentionally (or intentionally) damage your online reputation? Post and share your experience… you may just help another reader prevent disaster.

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