The State of Typo-Squatting 2007

[Kristijntje]

Annual report on typosquatting from McAfee:

By the end of 2007, at least 8,000 URLs using the word iphone will be registered, according to a well known domain expert. The most valuable – iphone.com – is owned by Apple itself, but when Steve Jobs announced the product early in 2007, Apple didn’t own the iphone domain yet. One expert estimates that Apple paid at least $1 million to buy that piece of valuable Web real estate.

Among the 8,000 registered URLs incorporating iphone are community fan sites, rumor and hack sites and, of course, scam sites. Freeappleiphonesnow dot com claims to offer free iPhones and variants that don’t even exist (like the iPhone “shuffle” and “nano”.) The URL is nothing more than a redirect to royalsweeps dot com. When we tested the site, we received debt consolidation offers, get rich quick solicitations, “free” cell phone prizes and other questionable e-mail...

full report: http://us.mcafee.com/root/identitytheft....=safe_typo&cid=38296

A related article from Ars:

Type in "unitrd.com" into your browser's address bar—oops, missed that "e"—and you won't find a site for United Airlines. Instead, you'll be directed to a landing page with lots of links on how to get cheap flights, credit card apps, and a plethora of other links. This typo-squatting episode is familiar to millions of web users, although the results aren't always so cleanly-formatted and porn-free. Unfortunately, the trend of typo-squatting is growing, and, according to security research company McAfee, squatters are increasingly targeting gamers, online shoppers, dating sites, and even children...

full article: http://us.mcafee.com/root/identitytheft....=safe_typo&cid=38296

[jezebel]

I'm beginning to think there's no difference between a typosquatter and typobrowserhijackers like Earthlink and Verizon.

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=jezebel link=topic=16962.msg66645#msg66645 date=1195845803]
I'm beginning to think there's no difference between a typosquatter and typobrowserhijackers like Earthlink and Verizon.
[/quote]

I think Earthlink and the other ISPs who redirect typos to ad filled search pages are probably making more money than the average typosquatter.  ;D

The biggest typo offender in the world is Cameroon's .cm registry which is using wild card DNS to redirect every unregistered .cm domain to a paid search page...type in any .com domain name as the typo .cm and you'll be taken to the parking page (ebay.cm, microsoft.cm...even tuliptools.cm)