Opportunistic cyber-squatters are seeking to capitalise on the rush of emergency mergers on Wall Street by snapping up domain names related to the collapsed banks and their buyers.
Among the web addresses to be bagged is barclayslehman.com, which was registered as early as Friday morning, and bankofamericamerrilllynch.com, which has been put up for sale on eBay.
Also available on the online auction site are bofaml.com, bankofamericaml.com and series of derivative web addresses.
Interested parties, such as Bank of America perhaps, are instructed to contact bofaml@gmail.com. However, those involved should not anticipate a quick sale. The domain name jpmbearstearns.com was registered back on March 15th just prior to the completion of the buy-out but still remains unsold.
Cybersquatting remains a serious problem for the banking industry with research from US-based digital brand manager CitizenHawk claiming that over 10,000 domainn names are infringing on the trademarks of the top ten firms in the US retail banking sector alone.