Wealth may mean power in some spheres, but it can’t protect you from identify theft.

Take the recent case of Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, who temporarily lost his persponal domain name ‘carlosslimhelu.com’ to a cybersquatter who tried to hold it for ransom.

A shadowy Net denizen identified in domain registrartion records as Ahmad Rusli of Jakarta, Indonesia, allegedly sent the billionaire an e-mail asking (US)$55 billion — or Rusli would link it to a porn site. When contacted by the UN copyright agancy, WIPO, Rusli told them he registered the domain name to protect it for Slim and the threat was simply designed to get the busy billionaire’s attention.

WIPO didn’t take long to decide that Rushli had acted in bad faith and ruled that the disputed domian be returned to Slim.

Like many immensely wealthy people, Slim is also a noted philanthropist. Forbes magazine last year ranked him the world’s second richest person (after Microsoft’s Bill Gates) with an estimated net worth of (US)$68 billion.