06 · Brand protection & paywall leakage
Nobody is impersonating The Ken yet. The leak today is the archive. The next risk is a fake stock-tip group.
I checked 4,154 lookalike domains, the main social platforms, app stores, podcast directories and scam reports. There is no phishing, no fake apps, no fake pages and no re-uploaded podcasts. What I did find is a steady leak: 2,399 the-ken.com pages saved on archive.today, some of them through gift links, plus a modified Android app that claims to unlock Premium. For a business that charges ₹4,956 a year to read, that matters more than impersonation does today. Looking ahead, a handful of freshly registered lookalike domains and the scams already hitting Moneycontrol and Zerodha show where impersonation would start.
Where things stand
All checked on 5 October 2026. I recorded where pirated copies exist but did not open or download any of them.
The archive leak
archive.today (also archive.ph and archive.md) saves a copy of a page when someone submits it, and it ignores robots.txt. robots.txt asks the Internet Archive not to crawl. archive.today ignores robots.txt entirely.
2,399 the-ken.com pages are on archive.today, and new stories show up within days of publication. A Grapevine thread asks for "Any trick to read the Ken & the morning context?". Other bypass routes have mostly closed: the removepaywalls.com page for The Ken returns 404, and 12ft.io is offline. That leaves archive.today as the main open route.
A saved copy only contains the full story if the server sent the full story when it was saved. Which copies contain full text and which contain only the preview is the first thing I'd check. It tells you whether the problem is the paywall or the gift links.
Fixes, cheapest first
- Measure it. Sample 100 saved copies and count full text against preview only. That's half a day's work.
- Serve archive fetchers the preview only. Submit a test page, see how archive.today's request shows up in the logs, and have Cloudflare, which The Ken already uses, give requests like it the preview version.
- Mark up the paywall. Story pages already declare their paywall with isAccessibleForFree. Newsletter and podcast pages, now most of what The Ken publishes, don't (see Product audit).
- Watch the count weekly. It's a single number to track.
Gift links are where growth and leakage meet
Story gifting is The Ken's oldest growth feature, and Praveen's February 2026 post promised to make it "feel like magic", like sharing any other link. That is the right goal. It also makes leaks easier.
Gift links get archived
The archive.today copies include /shared-story/ URLs and newsletter URLs carrying ?share_code=. Once one is saved, a gift meant for one friend is readable by anyone, permanently.
Gift links get posted
Of 258 Reddit posts linking to the-ken.com since 2016, 8 use share or gift URLs. That is small and mostly harmless, since a gift in a busy subreddit is good marketing. But it shows the links travel beyond the person they were sent to.
Magic for one reader, a preview for everyone else
Let the first reader who opens a gift link read it in full with no friction, then tie the link to that reader. Anyone else who opens it, including an archive fetcher, gets the preview and a sign-up prompt. Readers keep the magic, and a leaked link becomes a lead instead of a lost sale.
Telegram, forums and apps
| Where | What I found | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Telegram | A private invite-only group, "KEN HUB", with 13,872 members, surfaced in a search for Ken article sharing. A small public channel, "Ken | Portal", has 15 subscribers. A Grapevine commenter says articles are shared free in Telegram groups. | Unverified |
| Grapevine | Threads titled "Any trick to read the Ken & the morning context?" and "Anyone interested in buying/sharing The Morning Context and The Ken membership?" | Ongoing |
| APK sites | "The Ken v3.5.5 MOD APK", claiming Premium unlocked, on playmods.net. Unmodified copies of the official app on Uptodown, APKPure, Aptoide and Softonic. | Low–medium |
| Coupon sites | couponwcode.com ("100% Off") and couponupto.com ("90% Off") advertise The Ken discounts that don't exist. No login or payment capture. A DesiDime thread organises shared subscriptions. | Low |
| Scribd | One 13-page document titled "KEN Article", with 184 views. Its origin is unconfirmed. No bulk PDF dumps found. | Low |
| App stores | No fake publisher apps. The only other "Ken" app is an unrelated HR tool. A second APK site (a2zapk) advertises an "unlocked" com.ken.core in search results; the page itself was blocked. | Clear |
| Podcasts | No unofficial re-uploads. 65 matching YouTube videos across 10 searches all came from @TheKenWeb; Apple, Spotify and JioSaavn listings are all The Ken's own feeds. | Clear |
| Phishing | No public reports of fake Ken payment pages or emails. | Clear |
The modified APK is version 3.5.5, from 2021–22. If the current apps check subscription status on the server, it probably no longer works. It's worth a 10-minute check by the apps team.
Lookalike domains: none active, six worth watching
I generated 277 variants of "theken" and "the-ken" (dropped, doubled and swapped letters, neighbouring keys, rn/m and 0/o swaps, hyphens, and brand + keyword combinations like thekenpremium and theken-login) on 15 endings, then checked DNS, mail records, registration data and what each site shows.
| Domain | Registered | What's there | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| theken.in | Expired Aug 2026 | Pending delete: the exact .in name is about to become available to anyone. Worth a backorder this week | Act now |
| theken.io | 1 May 2026 | A "Launching Soon" page with an email sign-up form, behind a privacy proxy | Medium |
| theeken.com | 9 May 2026 | The same "Launching Soon" template and hosting as theken.io, eight days later. Possibly the same owner, not proven | Medium |
| thekken.in | 2 Oct 2026 | Registered three days before this check. A parking page with a fresh security certificate | Medium |
| the-kens.com | 22 Sep 2026 | The plural of the real domain, re-registered two weeks ago. Nothing served yet | Medium |
| thekenn.com · theken.net | Apr 2026 · 2023 | Parked or empty. theken.net's record was updated on 30 Sep 2026 | Low |
| thekenweb.com | 2013 | An unrelated person's page, at the name that matches @TheKenWeb | Low |
| theken.com · thekens.com · daybreakpodcast.com | various | Parked or for sale | Low |
The scam to get ahead of: fake stock-tip groups
I found no scam using The Ken's name: no fake job offers, no fake workshop or case-competition fees, no stock-tip groups. But the pattern is hitting The Ken's neighbours right now, and two of its products are exactly the kind of brand these scams borrow.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | The Delhi High Court bars the misuse of Moneycontrol's name in WhatsApp investment-scam groups, after Network18 sued |
| 2025 | Zerodha's Nithin Kamath warns of WhatsApp groups and a fake trading app using Zerodha's name |
| May 2025 | SEBI warns investors about stock-market scams on social media |
| Sep 2025 | SEBI warns about fraudsters impersonating the regulator itself |
| Jan 2026 | BSE warns about a deepfake video of its CEO giving stock tips |
Sources: BW Legal World, Outlook Money, Business Standard (×2), Zee News. Links on the sources page.
Long and Short and Ka-Ching! are scam-shaped names
One is a markets newsletter on listed companies, the other is about personal finance, and both carry a trusted brand. "Long and Short premium tips group" is the kind of name these WhatsApp groups use. The Ken's own WhatsApp channel has only 934 followers, so a fake group could easily look bigger than the real one.
Cheap things to do before it happens:
- A public "How The Ken contacts you" page: the official channels, and a plain statement that The Ken never gives stock tips or asks for payment on WhatsApp.
- Link that page from Long and Short, Ka-Ching! and every renewal email.
- Reclaim or watch @thekenweb and the dormant founder handle.
- Add the weekly checks below, so the first fake group is caught in days, not after readers lose money.
What I'd set up
A weekly brand-and-leakage report: a few numbers, with an alert only when something changes. This is what Doeity's brand-protection work does for consumer brands.
Archive count
New the-ken.com captures on archive.today, split into full text and preview.
App stores and APK sites
New apps or modified APKs using the name or the package ID.
Domains
Re-run the 4,154-domain scan, plus certificate logs. Alert when a watchlist domain starts serving pages or email.
Impersonation
New "Ken", "Long and Short" or "Ka-Ching" accounts and groups on X, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp, and fake payment pages, with evidence ready for takedown requests.
Handles: two to reclaim, one look-alike channel
The official accounts are consistent: @TheKenWeb on X (82.8K), YouTube (45K) and Facebook (6.9K), @theken_web on Instagram (22K), and /company/the-ken on LinkedIn. No accounts impersonate the founders or the CPO among about 20 variants checked on X.