Countermeasures!!!

A great story is emerging right now surrounding Bank of America and Wikileaks. Basically, Wikileaks is threatening to release a bunch of documents about a "major US bank" that most people assume is BofA. This isn't really interesting news since like a lot of folks out there I'm totally exhausted by Wikileaks and think Assange is a complete creeper.

Anyway, what IS interesting here is the preemptive strike that BofA is taking. They are buying up all of the domain names out there that could be used to open up negative sites about the company. In other words, take their CEO's name, add "sucks" to it and then .com...yup, they own that one.

It's an admission of guilt in part, but more importantly, it shows what it means to manage a brand in the digital age when NO information seems to be private anymore.

Here's more from Finextra.com:

According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of Directors' and senior executives' names followed by "sucks" and "blows".

For example, the company registered a number of domains for CEO Brian Moynihan: BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com.

The wire report counted hundreds of such domain name registrations on 17 December alone. They were acquired through an intermediary that frequently registers domain names on behalf of large companies, says the report.

Bank of America has reputedly established a 'war room' to draw up strategy and rebutt allegations likely to emerge from the publication of thousands of internal documents by WikiLeaks.