Domain takedown
The domain-takedown use case is run from the Takedowns section in the Pinch dashboard. Pinch continuously detects fake sites impersonating your brand — knockoff storefronts, counterfeit outlets, typosquats — pulls the registration + infrastructure metadata, captures evidence (screenshots of the home page, checkout, about/contact, policy pages), drafts the DMCA / registrar / host complaints with your trademark and legal materials cited, and files them to each party in sequence. You review the queue; Pinch does the filing.
Setup
1. Complete Takedown setup
Open Takedowns in the left nav. Before Pinch can file a complaint on your behalf, upload the four assets your takedown setup needs. Each one is cited automatically in every complaint Pinch drafts:
| Asset | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Trademark certificate | Gives the claim standing — a registration number a reviewer can verify. |
| Letter of authorisation | Needed when you file on behalf of the brand rather than owning the mark directly. |
| Assets, logos, product images | Your real artwork, so a reviewer can see what was copied. |
| Privacy policy | Your published terms — cloned sites usually reproduce them verbatim, making this strong evidence. |
Accepted formats: PDF, PNG, JPEG, or WebP. Files are checked by content, not filename, so a renamed file is refused with a reason you can act on. When all four are uploaded, the Takedown setup section shows Setup complete — every complaint cites them automatically.
2. Review detected cases
Pinch surfaces detected domains in the Fake Website Takedown list on the Takedowns page. Columns:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Case | The Pinch case ID. |
| Domain | The impersonating domain. |
| Status | New, Under review, and later stages (Drafting, Reporting, Complete). |
| Confidence | Pinch's confidence that the site is impersonating you (e.g. Confirmed). |
| Site | Whether the site is still live or already gone (e.g. Live, Gone 1d ago). |
| Detected | When Pinch first saw it. |
| Registrar / Host | Who runs the domain and who it's served from (e.g. Dynadot Inc. / Cloudflare). |
Filter by domain / case / registrar text search and by status. You can also open a case yourself with the Open a case button in the top-right of the list — paste a domain you've spotted and Pinch starts the pipeline for it.
3. Open a case to see what Pinch found
Click any row to open the case detail page. What's on it:
- Case header — case ID, domain, status badge, and the line "Every fact here is read from the registries; nothing is sent for you" (so you know nothing's been filed yet).
- Registration panel — registrar, IANA ID, abuse contact (email + phone), registry (e.g. VeriSign), registered + expiry dates, registry locks.
- Infrastructure panel — host provider (e.g. Cloudflare), host abuse contact, network / ASN, IP addresses, nameservers.
- The site itself — platform detected (e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify), the live page title, HTTP status at capture time.
- What detection saw — signals Pinch used to classify the site (platform fingerprints, contact addresses, etc.).
4. Draft and file the complaints
Each case has a Takedown progress panel showing the pipeline. Typical stages:
- Collecting evidence — screenshots of the home page, checkout, about/contact, and policy page, timestamped (e.g. "as it looked Oct 12, 08:45 PM"). ~9 items captured per case.
- Drafting response — Pinch composes the registrar + host complaints citing your Trademark certificate, logos, and policy from Setup.
- Reporting to registrar — complaint sent to the registrar's abuse address.
- Reporting to Google Safe Browsing — the site is reported so Chrome warns users before they land on it.
- Reporting to Shopify — only if the site is hosted on Shopify. If not, the step shows "not hosted on Shopify" and skips.
- Complete — all parties notified; Pinch continues to track whether the site goes down.
Click Draft the complaints on a case to let Pinch generate the written notices and move to the next stage. The chat panel at the bottom (Ask about {domain}, the evidence, or what filing involves…) lets you ask Pinch to explain anything in the case — "why do you think this is a copycat?", "what jurisdiction does this registrar fall under?", or "regenerate the complaint with this addition" — before the complaints go out.
5. Track the queue
The Waiting to be sent section at the top of the Takedowns page lists cases that have complaints drafted and are ready to file. Each row shows the case ID, the domain, who the complaint will be written to (e.g. Registrar, Host), and how long it's been waiting. The "LONGEST WAIT" indicator in the top-right of this list is a service-level signal — your takedown pipeline is working as long as this stays short.
6. (Optional) Downstream enforcement at your own checkout
Customers you've already identified as placing orders from counterfeit storefronts can also be denied at your own checkout. Add a Decision block on your Orders workflow that denies when the referrer domain matches a Pinch takedown case, and a Playbook that writes pinch-deny on their customer tag. Combined with reseller abuse, this closes the loop so you're not shipping real inventory to counterfeit resellers while a takedown is still in flight.
What you'll see once it's live
- A continuously-updated feed of impersonating domains on the Takedowns page, ranked by confidence.
- Complaints drafted and filed to registrars + hosts without you writing legal copy.
- Sites listed in Google Safe Browsing so Chrome warns anyone trying to visit them.
- The ability to open a case yourself when your team spots a counterfeit site Pinch hasn't flagged yet.