This is part of an ongoing series by Dave Byrne, TrustRaise founder and BSI Advisory Board Member, about where we find the practice of brand safety & suitability in 2026. You can find all the articles here.
In my previous article, I showed you how scammers weaponize circular legitimacy, post-purchase hijacking, and exclusivity exploitation to turn your brand into their most effective tool. Now comes the harder question: how do we stop this before it damages trust, revenue, and community? In this article, I’ll walk through some of the most critical strategies, and give you an actionable checklist of things you can do today to protect your brand from misappropriation.
If you're going to fight brand misappropriation, you need to know what you're fighting. I have seen too many advertisers mistake brand misinformation and misappropriation. The difference matters more than most people realize, and getting it wrong means your reports go nowhere.
Brand misappropriation is when someone impersonates your brand to scam or defraud users: fake websites that mimic yours, fraudulent customer service accounts intercepting your customers, malicious links disguised as legitimate offers, or deepfake recruitment scams using your executives' likenesses (all discussed in my first article). Brand misinformation, on the other hand, is when someone makes false claims about your brand: fabricated reviews, shutdown rumors, exaggerated harm allegations.
The distinction matters because brand misappropriation violates platform policies regarding scams, fraud & impersonation and should be actioned when reported on through the correct channels. Meanwhile brand misinformation typically doesn't violate rules and may not be actioned. As such, from here on out I will be speaking specifically about brand misappropriation.
Platforms are tackling Brand Misappropriation and there are tools to protect your brand, but you need to know exactly how they work and where the gaps are. Meta's Brand Rights Protection Manager was significantly enhanced in 2025, adding an "Other" category for deceptive practices that exploit brand names without touching protected assets; that closes a gap that scammers have been exploiting for years. Google suspended over 700,000 scam advertiser accounts in 2024 and claims a 90% drop in deepfake ad reports. They've shifted toward proactive AI enforcement, TikTok's automated enforcement now catches 85% of policy violations. X has impersonation reporting that distinguishes between impersonation and trademark violations. Third-party services like Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, and Zefr fill some gaps. The tools exist, but they're not standardized, and you need to know the exact reporting path for every platform where your brand appears.
The real problem is not platform capability, it's speed. Scammers adapt their tactics in hours, while platform enforcement can lag days behind. This means fraudulent ads still run for days and enforcement challenges persist around commercial scams. By the time you see a scam through user reports or brand monitoring, damage is already being done. I have watched brands focus all their attention on their primary website while scammers quietly built entire fake ecosystems across secondary channels; for example, cloned Instagram accounts, spoofed customer service pages,, fake LinkedIn profiles recruiting on behalf of the company. Every touchpoint where your brand interacts with customers is a surface area scammers will exploit. That means paid ads, owned social, email campaigns, marketplaces, influencer channels, customer service touchpoints, employee profiles. All of it.
Tools like Spikerz are closing this gap by monitoring these surfaces at scale and actioning faster than manual processes; automating impersonator detection and takedown across social platforms to catch fake accounts before they build credibility. That speed matters because cybercriminals are using automated impersonation kits, AI-written content, and social engineering at unprecedented scale.
Nearly 83% of scam emails now use AI language models, and that's just one vector. You need monitoring that matches that automation: AI-powered tools scanning for spoofed domains, cloned accounts, unauthorized use of visual assets, and content that mimics your brand's tone and style. But fighting AI with AI is only one piece of the solution.
You also need to think about severity. Not all misappropriation requires the same response speed. Sophisticated brands build systems that recognize when product launches or high-profile campaigns get targeted and escalate immediately. These are the moments where billions in losses happen. Impersonation scams alone cost consumers nearly $3 billion in 2024. The gap between detecting a threat and stopping it is where your brand's trust gets converted into a scammer's payday.
Your customers need to know what's real and what's not, and that means clear, consistent communication at every touchpoint. Simple warnings like "We will never call asking for your credit card information" work when you integrate them into transaction flows, confirmation emails, and landing pages. Clear communication about verification helps maintain trust rather than erodes it. Make verification easy: a dedicated page listing all official channels, verification badges unique to your communications, a simple way for customers to report suspicious messages, and regular reminders during high-risk periods like product launches or holiday shopping. Educate proactively, not reactively. Do not wait until they are scammed to tell them how to spot fakes. By then, it is too late and they are blaming you.
Even with proactive measures, some customers will still fall victim. The way you respond makes the difference between a single incident and long-term reputational harm. Focus on three principles:
From an operational standpoint, there are additional steps every brand safety lead should consider:
Brand misappropriation in 2026 is not a problem you solve once. The tools exist. The platforms provide reporting mechanisms. The monitoring technology has matured. What separates brands that maintain trust from those that lose it is the speed and effectiveness of their response.
Scammers are already spending your trust. Every fake customer service message, every spoofed delivery notification, every fraudulent "exclusive offer" converts years of brand investment into leverage they use against your customers. The only question is whether you're tracking the balance before it runs out. Detection, response, and recovery are not separate initiatives. They are one continuous operation, and in 2026, it needs to run faster than the scams targeting you.
Use this as a starting point for your next team meeting or quarterly review:
If you can check most of these boxes, you're ahead of the curve. If you can't, you know where to start.