WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina apparently has learned something about registering website domain names.
Shortly after the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive announced her campaign last week, she found out that a cybersquatter had bought the rights to carlyfiorina.org and was using it to criticize her record.
Chuck Todd of NBC News brought up the issue while interviewing Fiorina on "Meet the Press" and showed the website, which features row after row of frowny-face emoticons representing 30,000 people laid off during her Hewlett-Packard tenure from 1999 to 2005.
Fiorina defended her record and after the interview sent a tweet thanking Todd for having her on the show and saying, "Btw, checkout chucktodd.org." Her campaign had registered that domain and clicking on the link redirected traffic to her official campaign site, carlyforpresident.com.
Fiorina had done the same thing last week with sethmeyers.org when she appeared on NBC's "The Late Show with Seth Meyers."
Fiorina has acknowledged she made a mistake in not registering carlyfiorina.org first, but she is not the only 2016 presidential candidate bedeviled by cybersquatters.
Republican Ted Cruz must endure a rogue tedcruz.com site that says only "Support President Obama. Immigration Reform now", while jebbushforpresident.com is being used by supporters of gay rights, not Jeb Bush.
The site hillaryclinton.org is not the work of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign and cyber security experts say it contains malicious software.