Typosquatting
Typosquatting is the registration of domain names that mimic a well-known domain with small typos in order to capture traffic from people who mistype it
What it means, how it is used and where it comes up, with its related concepts.
What it is and how it works
It is a form of cybersquatting: rather than registering a brand’s exact name, someone registers versions with swapped, missing or doubled letters, a different extension or an extra hyphen. Anyone who mistypes the address ends up on someone else’s page.
That traffic may be used to display ads, divert sales to competitors or, in the most serious cases, impersonate the brand for phishing or malware distribution. Many organisations therefore register the most likely variants of their domain pre-emptively and monitor new look-alike registrations.
Example: a domain such as “gogle” or “amazn” under any extension exploits a common typing error.
Also known as
URL hijacking
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