![]() Typosquatters may be motivated for profit, as with cybersquatting or cyberpiracy, to target a competitor or celebrity, or even simply to indulge in the sport of typosquatting. Typosquatters will often buy a typo-squatting domain and redirect it to their website, which they may make look like the real site of a bank or other company to trick users into submitting sensitive information such as login credentials. ![]() Typosquatting is also used in phishing scams. ![]() Typosquatters will often buy this typo-squatting domain to display advertisements or redirect users to malicious websites that are not the actual websites they were looking for. How does typosquatting work?Ī person might look up a domain name, such as “” and mistakenly type in the address of “”. Clearly, there is a significant typosquatting ecosystem around high-profile, often-typed domain names.” There are legal ways to track and shut them down if they are legally threatening your business/consumers or leading to potentially fraudulent activities.Īs per Sophos survey on the subject, “Microsoft typosquats were at 61%, Twitter 74%, Facebook 81%, Google 83% and Apple at 86%. Any such names that resemble your business name must be reported. This is often why you should keep an eye on your domain and any typosquatting domains being registered. Many charities, businesses and websites dealing with transactions are often at the receiving end of these frauds from criminals. Typosquatting can also be used by companies themselves in order to protect brand reputation and direct traffic towards their domain name. Typosquatting is often used in SEO, for example, to prevent people from finding the website of a competitor or rival business. The US federal law Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act protects businesses and consumers against typosquatting scams. ![]() Typosquatters often use these malicious sites for phishing scams and to host ads from affiliate networks and adware programs. These domain names may be misspelt versions, phonetic equivalents, shortened versions, or other variations on the original site’s name. The typosquatter could then place ads on this site that would generate revenue for them every time someone clicked on one of the ads. For example, a user might type “” into their browser, but because of a typo, they might actually end up at “”. This attack involves taking advantage of typographical errors made by users when inputting a website address into their web browser. Typosquatting is a form of cybersquatting, which is the act of registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. Once on the site, users may be tricked into providing sensitive information or installing malware.įor us, as cyber security consultants helping businesses protect their assets, we use such tricks during Red teaming operations or bespoke pen testing assessments (including phishing assessments) where IT or security teams want to assess the cyber readiness of their controls. Attackers register domain names that are similar to popular brands or products in the hopes that users will mistype the name and end up on their malicious site instead. Typosquatting forms the basis of cyber attacks that aim to take advantage of users who mistake a malicious website for a legitimate one. ![]()
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