Prior to his arrest, WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange hinted that the next batch of documents released would not be secret government information, but rather would implicate a major American bank. Assange has never confirmed which bank, but rumor and speculation have pointed to Bank of America as the target.
In a defensive move, Bank of America now seems to be buying up domains for its senior executives and board members, including their names along with “sucks” or “blows.” Domain Name Wire reports hundred of domain name registrations on December 17 alone. For example, the company registered a number of domains for CEO Brian Moynihan: brianmoynihanblows.com, brianmoynifansucks.com and so on. It also nabbed the .net and .org versions of several of these names as well.
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The names were registered by brand-monitoring company MarkMonitor, not by the bank itself. But MarkMonitor, which describes itself as “the global leader in enterprise brand protection,” is also listed as the registrant for the bankofamerica.com domain.
Of course, it seems unlikely that this strategy will be terribly effective in shutting down online critiques about Bank of America. There are still a variety of slurs and top-level domains to go, and as BoingBoing quips, grabbing them all would exceed the bank’s capital reserves. (There’s a government bailout joke to make here, but I will refrain).
Last week, Bank of America announced it was joining PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa and cutting off payments to WikiLeaks.
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