Fake websites cheat airlines, hotels

Robert Evans

GENEVA: The United Nations trademark and copyright agency WIPO on Wednesday revealed the existence of a raft of fake Web addresses which divert customers of airlines, hotels and car hire firms to a site selling cheap travel deals.

The revelation came in a report from the agency on a ruling from its Internet dispute settlement centre that one of the phoney sites -- airfranceairlines.com -- should be closed down for infringing the rights of French flag carrier Air France.

Air France, which operates the largest medium-haul network in Europe in terms of daily flights and uses airfrance.com as its main site, argued in its complaint to WIPO that its name was being used to produce business for rival airlines.

The report listed nine other sites including holidayinnhotels.org, hilton-hotel-reservation.com and marriot-hotels.com to us-airways.net, lufthansa-airlines.net and british-air-ways.com as operating in the same way. The other three were twaairlines.org, qantas-airlines.com and al-italia.com.

All the sites, using names of car hire companies as well as airlines and hotels already ordered closed by WIPO, were registered by a Patrick Ory with residences in the Netherlands and Cancun, Mexico, according to the report.

Travellers surfing the Web for well-known brands and assuming the look-alike addresses are genuine find themselves linked to a site operated by Cheap Travel Network where they can compare prices over a range of offers.

The WIPO report said the Web engine at the phoney Air France site -- as well as the others -- was powered by a company named QIXO.COM which offers webmasters the chance to earn commission from sales they bring.

DISCOUNT TRAVEL SPECIALIST

The Network's own site is also powered by QIXO, which itself runs a similar cheap travel site at qixo.com and describes itself as a worldwide specialist in discount airline travel, hotels, car rentals and vacation packages.

Over the past three years, WIPO has handled over 5,000 cases of so-called "cybersquatting" by firms or individuals who register sites with well-known names -- including football clubs and film stars -- with which they have no connection.

Many of these were set up with the aim of selling them at a profit to their more obvious owners, or to attract business to Internet shopping -- and sometimes to pornographic sites.

Nearly all of the sites involved have been closed after rulings by WIPO arbitrators, although Bimbo S.A., a Spanish confectionery maker, was told by the agency that it could not lay exclusive claim to the use of its name in Web addresses.

WIPO said that the owner of the phoney sites could earn three to five U.S. dollars per ticket sold simply from creating traffic to Cheap Travel Network and QIXO.COM -- the default addresses to which any hit on them is redirected.

Ory failed to file any response to the complaint, or to earlier complaints in which he was involved over sites like holidayinnhotels.com and europe-car.com, said the arbitrator for WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

Therefore, the arbitrator ruled, "he registered the domain name at issue -- and many other infringing domain names -- with the clear intention of diverting Internet users to a website that competes with (Air France's) services for...personal gain."

Reuters