Brand impersonation: step-by-step guide to shield your brand

Here at Branddi, one thing we emphasize daily is how choosing digital protection and continuously improving it are key pieces for a healthy brand. After all, fraudsters and dishonest competitors keep refining their tactics, and ignoring this constant evolution means exposing your company to these scams.

Brand impersonation is one of these advances, combining fraud and phishing to steal conversions, data, and traffic from the targeted business. But what exactly is this fraud, how does it happen, how does it affect brands, and most importantly, how can you defend yourself?

Join Branddi and check out this article for an efficient and strategic step-by-step guide to shield your company against brand impersonation!

What is brand impersonation?

Briefly, brand impersonation is a fraudulent practice where third parties impersonate a legitimate brand. To do this, these fraudsters use the brand’s name, logo, visual identity, or other elements to deceive consumers or business partners.

But it doesn’t stop there! By mimicking the brand’s elements, these fraudsters can send emails requesting payment of fees or account verification from users.

The similarity of the fake pages and communications is so close that, according to a 2023 study by Arkose Labs, more than 40% of consumers admit to having difficulty identifying fake sites related to well-known brands.

This apparent undetectability has driven the growth of attacks using brand impersonation. In fact, the same research revealed an estimated 70% increase in this type of attack between 2022 and 2023.

But how, exactly, does brand impersonation work?

How does a brand impersonation attack work?

The vast majority of brand impersonation attacks happen through mass sending of fraudulent emails. To do this, these fraudsters spend a lot of time researching the victim company’s visual identity and communication tone.

This way, they manage to emulate the brand’s tone, creating a credible and sophisticated approach to their targets, whether consumers or company employees. After identifying these users as points of contact for gathering information, the person behind the brand impersonation creates addresses, URLs, and email addresses similar to the originals.

Done! Now they can “wear” your brand and take advantage of all the credibility you’ve built in the market to carry out their scams.

Main Types of Brand Impersonation

Just like with all other types of fraud, brand impersonation does not have just one format, although they all share similarities. It is precisely because of this multiplicity of formats and channels that this fraud has become so difficult to detect. To make monitoring easier, Branddi has gathered below the five main types of brand impersonation.

Check them out!

Phishing

It is not uncommon to see confusion between phishing and brand impersonation when we talk about digital fraud. However, it is important to emphasize that, although they are related, they do not mean exactly the same thing.

When we talk about phishing, we are referring to the act of mimicking the identity of a specific brand to gain access to sensitive information from employees or consumers.

That’s why it’s common to find phishing emails, links, or attachments asking for confidential data, credentials, or purchase histories. Fraudsters focus their efforts on large brands, seen as leaders in their sector, since they involve a higher flow of users, both internal and external.

Because phishing is such a common type of brand impersonation, it topped the global cyberattack rankings. In 2024 alone, this practice was detected in 61% of fraud attempts, according to research by Appgate.

Brand Hijacking

Just like with phishing, brand hijacking—also known as spoofing or brand takeover—occurs when a fraudster copies the email address, URL, or social media accounts of well-established brands.

In this way, these malicious users manage to deceive consumers, divert traffic, or cause financial and reputational damage.

Fake accounts on social media

The creation of fake accounts using the name, logo, and design of reputable brands also represents a type of brand impersonation. After all, these pages rely on likes, comments, and shares from real (or fake) users to appear more legitimate.
Furthermore, these profiles can also be used to sell counterfeit products or to redirect users to fake websites.

Technical support brand impersonation

Another common type of brand impersonation is fake technical support, where fraudsters pretend to be part of an external support team. In this way, they manage to contact the team and request login credentials to gain confidential access.

Executive Impersonation

Literally translated as “executive impersonation,” this is the least common and most recent form of brand impersonation. This technique requires a higher level of sophistication and planning by fraudsters, who need to identify and fake the identity of senior executives or company representatives.

The goal in these cases is to deceive employees, partners, or even clients to obtain confidential information, authorize strategic changes, or request financial transactions.

Although these cases of executive impersonation are fewer compared to other types, there is a clear trend of increase. Evidence of this is shown in a chart by the software company Fortra, which compares the growth of these cases between 2021 and 2022.

What is the real cost of brand impersonation for brands?

There is a false consensus among entrepreneurs that frauds like brand impersonation only target large corporations. However, while these giants are indeed targets, this does not mean that small and medium-sized brands are immune to the consequences.

And it is this mindset that can lead your business to suffer serious financial and reputational losses. But these are not the only possible impacts in such cases.

Keep reading to understand how this fraud can be a danger to your brand!

Reputation Damage

Imagine searching for a product or service from a brand you already trust, only to find yourself disappointed with the results. That’s exactly how your consumers feel when they encounter frauds involving elements of your business.

In other words, even if your company isn’t truly responsible for the user’s or customer’s dissatisfaction, it’s your name they’ll remember when thinking about the experience.

So, it’s no exaggeration to say that these frauds not only damage the official brand’s reputation but also undermine the trust that previously existed between the company and the customer.

Loss of revenue

Another direct impact of brand impersonation actions is loss of revenue: over $10 billion in the United States alone, according to an FBI report.

This happens because, by incorporating the identity and taking the place of your brand, these fraudsters capture legitimate traffic meant for your company. Additionally, they divert conversions from paid ads and campaigns, thus harming your revenue.

This loss is especially felt in sectors such as online retail, technology, and consumer goods, where competition is fierce and customer experience is crucial for loyalty.

Cost increase

When we talk about the increase in costs due to brand impersonation, it’s natural for people to think of operational protection costs. This is not only a false but also a dangerous assumption, since investment in digital protection not only strengthens the brand but also prevents new attacks from happening.

In other words, when discussing costs resulting from brand impersonation, the correct approach is to look at operational and legal expenses. This is because, upon closer examination of these financial impacts, we see that these frauds directly affect the costs involved in correcting the damage caused by imitators.

But that’s not all: this type of fraud is also responsible for increasing resources allocated to internal investigations to identify anomalous patterns and review campaigns. As a result, we can observe an inflation of costs per click.

Finally, we cannot ignore the occasional costs related to the involvement of legal departments to identify those responsible, take legal action, and manage potential crises.

Reduction of online engagement and other impacts on campaigns

By directly competing on the same digital advertising platforms—such as Google Ads or social media—it’s common for brand impersonation to significantly reduce a brand’s engagement online. This not only makes it harder to build strong relationships but also inflates CPC (cost per click) and reduces campaign ROI.

In other words, the company loses visibility and begins to struggle to reach its target audience.

Consumer confusion

According to Interpol’s 2023 Digital Security Report, brand impersonation attacks account for around 64% of global phishing incidents.

In other words, your brand and your customers may have never been targeted by this type of fraud—but that doesn’t mean they never will be. After all, these cases have been increasingly common, including in Brazil, as shown in the chart below released by Serasa:

While the consequences for the brand, as we’ve seen above, are serious, they are no less significant for the consumer. That’s because the customer, in addition to being exposed to lower-quality products and services, also faces uncertainty at the time of purchase—disrupting their buying journey and discouraging future interactions with the brand.

How to protect your brand against brand impersonation?

After discussing brand impersonation fraud and its main consequences for companies, it’s only natural that you’d want to understand how to protect your business. That’s why Branddi has prepared this comprehensive guide with strategic and effective tips to prevent fraudsters from using your brand in their scams.

Let’s take a look at Branddi’s step-by-step approach below!

Learn to recognize suspicious patterns

Although brand impersonation attempts can vary widely in type, they often share several similarities that can help guide and speed up your defensive actions.

These include illegitimate URLs and domains, grammar mistakes, messaging that doesn’t match the brand’s tone of voice, or the use of unusual communication channels.

While this initial assessment doesn’t guarantee 100% success in deeper investigations, it can help identify more generic cases.

Ensure your brand is registered

Although it alone does not guarantee the protection of your business, trademark registration is an important step to ensure your exclusive use and legal security.

To do this, register all variations of your brand’s domain and intellectual property. This way, you will ensure that your business is protected in all relevant jurisdictions!
(Learn how to register your trademark by clicking here)

Invest in the education of your employees and audience

Have you ever heard that a truly established company is one that is easily recognized? This is not only true but also influences how quickly your brand can recover after a crisis caused by frauds like brand impersonation.

To achieve this, it’s important not only to educate your audience with awareness campaigns, preventive alerts, and a well-defined communication standard but also to invest in aligning your employees. After all, a team that is connected and aware of the brand’s identity is quicker at identifying threats. As a result, they are also more careful about sharing sensitive data and official company communications, which reduces the chances of mistakes that imitators could exploit.

This can be done through ongoing training and development programs, ranging from security workshops to specific guidance on the brand’s identity and values.

Strengthen your digital presence

According to data released by the previously mentioned Fortra, over 90% of companies currently use social media in some way. But do all of them have a truly strategic presence? The answer is no: a quick search on any social network shows that many brands are still lost when it comes to prioritizing their digital protection.

Although effectively safeguarding your business always involves personalized strategies, some initial steps remain consistent, such as:

• Maintaining verified official profiles on major platforms like social networks, marketplaces, and search engines to make it harder for imitators to act;
• Using security certificates such as the HTTPS protocol;
• Conducting regular reviews of your brand’s digital presence to identify and correct inconsistencies.

Rely on specialized support for continuous and in-depth monitoring

For many brands, regardless of size, tracking traffic data, advertising campaigns, and mentions can be exhausting. This is because many don’t have enough time or hands to maintain continuous monitoring.

Still, this is an essential step, as this analysis ensures that your business stays vigilant and is not caught off guard by brand impersonation. It also demonstrates a strong and firm stance of active response to fraud cases, discouraging malicious users.

And that’s exactly what we do here at Branddi!

Branddi is the key tool for protecting your brand against brand impersonation

Here at Branddi, we detect numerous cases of brand impersonation daily and witness firsthand how these frauds negatively impact brands. That’s why we work diligently, combining artificial intelligence, cutting-edge technology, and human expertise to develop a strategic solution.

Against fraud, we perform 24/7 monitoring on Google Ads, customer service channels, social media, and across more than 2,000 existing TLDs. This way, we build a multifaceted and comprehensive protection system, neutralizing threats before they affect you.

This way, if our systems detect and confirm a brand impersonation action, we file out-of-court complaints on over 5,000 platforms. These include registrars, servers, hosting systems, browsers, and advertising platforms.

The proof of our success lies in our results: an 80% reduction in complaints and a 99% success rate in takedowns.

Don’t let brand impersonation steal the results and credibility your brand has built. Rely on Branddi to sleep peacefully, knowing your brand is protected!