Universal resource locator verification service with cross-branding detection

A method for determining whether web page universal resource locators (URLs) are associated with trusted or fraudulent web sites, comprising:

• as a user browses the world wide web using computing equipment, obtaining by a URL verification engine on the computing equipment a URL for a web page of unknown authenticity, wherein the URL comprises a second level domain and wherein the second level domain comprises a top level domain;
• extracting by the URL verification engine on the computing equipment a brand name from the URL, wherein the brand name comprises a portion of the second level domain and wherein extracting the brand name from the URL comprises discarding the top level domain;
• determining by the URL verification engine on the computing equipment whether the URL is untrusted using the extracted brand name as at least one input to an internet search engine, wherein determining whether the URL is untrusted using the extracted brand name comprises:
• using the extracted brand name and the second level domain to query the internet search engine to produce a link count value and a ranked list of second level domains;
• and
• using the link count value and a position of the second level domain in the ranked list in computing a Boolean trust value and using the Boolean trust value in determining whether the URL is trusted or untrusted;
• if the URL is not determined to be untrusted, evaluating by the URL verification engine on the computing equipment content in the web page to identify at least one page brand name that is associated with the web page and comparing the page brand name to the extracted brand name, wherein evaluating the content in the web page comprises:
• extracting page elements from the web page;
• and
• comparing the extracted page elements to information in a brand indicator table to identify the page brand name;
• determining by the URL verification engine on the computing equipment whether cross-branding is present, wherein cross-branding is present if the page brand name is different from the extracted brand name;
• and
• if it is determined that cross-branding is not present, notifying the user that the URL is trusted.