The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Bruce Billson, has implored Indigenous small businesses to take urgent action to safeguard their brand and identity on the internet or risk seeing impersonators, web-name ‘campers’ or cyber criminals take up domain names just like theirs.

“Domain names are very much the identity of a business and critical to their success and Indigenous small businesses cannot afford to have their identity sold to someone else,” Mr Billson said.

A new system is being introduced allowing anyone with a connection to Australia to register the .au category of domain name. Instead of ending with .com.au, .net.au, .asn.au, etc, people can have a shorter name. For example, shoes.com.au could be shoes.au

However, this change being imposed by the non-government regulator, .au Domain Administration (auDA), could have potentially momentous consequences that could see Indigenous businesses lose their customer base or be at the mercy of cyber criminals impersonating them if they do not proactively sign up to the new system.

The auDA has decided that Australian businesses with an existing domain name will only have until 20 September to register their equivalent .au name before it becomes available to the general public.

“With only a handful of weeks to go until this deadline, my worry is that hardly any small businesses I've met are aware this is taking place and many of their industry associations are aghast at how little is known about this,” Mr Billson said.

“I’m urging Indigenous small businesses to safeguard their brand and identity on the internet or risk seeing impersonators, web-name ‘campers’ or cyber criminals take up domain names just like theirs.

“The consequences of not registering your existing business name by this deadline could be catastrophic for a business if a rival or someone else took their online name.

“It's worth spending a few minutes and a few dollars to protect your digital assets, to reduce the risk of squatting on your domain name or someone demanding much more money down the track to sell your name back to you.”

The Australian Cyber Security Centre has issued an alert and warns on its website that ‘opportunistic cybercriminals could register your .au domain name in an attempt to impersonate your business’.

Mr Billson wrote to auDA expressing concern about the rollout and the lack of awareness about the change and urged it to extend the 20 September deadline for 12 months. Other organisations representing small business have echoed the concerns. The request was rejected by auDA.

“Now my mission is to raise awareness of this change to try and make sure small and family business across the country are not caught short when it comes to the shortened .au domain name,” Mr Billson said.

“With all the challenges small business owners and leaders are facing now, the last thing anyone needs is someone ripping off their domain name.”

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