Patent ID: 7698442
Filing Date: 2010-04-13
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method for determining whether or not certain web page universal resource locators (URLs) are associated with trusted or fraudulent web sites, wherein a user browses to a plurality of web pages on the world wide web of unknown authenticity using computing equipment, wherein at least some of the web pages to which the user browses are associated with trusted web sites, and wherein at least some of the web pages to which the user browses are associated with fraudulent web sites, the method comprising: as the user browses the world wide web using the computing equipment, obtaining URLs for the web pages of unknown authenticity including URLs for the web pages that are associated with the trusted web sites and URLs for the web pages that are associated with the fraudulent web sites using a URL verification client at the computing equipment; transmitting the URLs from the URL verification client to a URL verification server over a communications network, wherein the URLs that are transmitted include the URLs for the web pages that are associated with the trusted web sites and the URLs for the web pages that are associated with the fraudulent web sites; at the URL verification server, obtaining a plurality of proposed brands each of which is associated with a respective one of the URLs, wherein each of the URLs includes a second level domain and wherein the proposed brands for the URLs for the web pages associated with the fraudulent web sites do not include any of the second level domains; and at the URL verification server, evaluating the URLs for the web pages of unknown authenticity including the web pages that are associated with the trusted web sites and the web pages that are associated with the fraudulent web sites using the proposed brands and the URLs to determine for each URL whether the proposed brand is legitimately associated with that URL.