Microsoft Looks To Out Typosquatters

from the named-and-shamed dept

Tue, Apr 11th 2006 12:48am — Mike Masnick

Typosquatting is hardly a new phenomenon. It's been around for many years, with people registering common (or not so common) typos of popular domain names. In the last few years, the practice has really taken off, as the typosquatters like to fill the pages with Google AdSense ads (at best) or spyware/malware (at worst). Depending on your perspective, this could be considered a problem. At least some folks at Microsoft appear to believe it's an issue, as they've released a special plugin for identifying typosquatters. Type in any URL, and it lists out the typosquats surrounding it. It's an interesting idea, but you would think the folks at Microsoft would have other things to work on, such as getting their core products out on time.

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7 Comments

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Sean, 11 Apr 2006 @ 2:02am

Plenty of Employees
I'm sure MS has enough employees, and enough divisions, that they can build their next OS, and work on stuff like this at the same time. It's not like everyone at MS, down to the janitors, needs to be working on Vista.

If we go by your thinking, all the folks at MS building security patches should stop what they're doing and start working on Vista. All the folks in the MS Office division should stop what they're doing in work on Vista. The artist painting the moral in the building lobby should stop what they're doing and start creating artwork for vista! Etc, etc, etc.
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Mike (profile), 11 Apr 2006 @ 2:35am

Re: Plenty of Employees
I'm sure MS has enough employees, and enough divisions, that they can build their next OS, and work on stuff like this at the same time. It's not like everyone at MS, down to the janitors, needs to be working on Vista.

It was a joke...
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Sean, 11 Apr 2006 @ 3:37am

Re: Re: Plenty of Employees
Sorry. :)
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mont, 11 Apr 2006 @ 4:36am

Typosquatters Unite!
I once owned the domain montster.com until the cease and desist letters started coming. I made alot of money referring to Hotjobs.com. The sad thing though is that people back then sent me resumes with ssn # and enough information for me to buy a house with.
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discojohnson, 11 Apr 2006 @ 6:30am

Now now, it's not a plugin
...released a special plugin for identifying typosquatters.

they're called "Add-ons" now (thanks USPO).
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BMR777, 11 Apr 2006 @ 3:33pm

Gotta hate those...
I hate those. When I find a website that I like and yet frequently misspell I will add all of the possible misspellings or at least the ones I type the most to the good ol' hosts file. :-)

BMR777
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Mkvakin, 6 Jul 2006 @ 3:57pm

Typosquatting detection tool
Speaking about typosquatters, here is a free website that detects whether your site has been typosquattered

http://veralab.com/dnsdomainsearch/typosquatters.jsp

Here is what you need to do:

1. Type your company domain name into the input field below
2. Choose the root domain from the drop down list below
3. Choose the types of typos you want to be investigated
4. Click “Search” and wait for a while

The system will generate the list of possible typos and misprints and tell you whether any domain names using these typos are already taken by other people.
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