Typosquatters are Leading Innocent Victims Astray

Typosquatting takes advantage of an inclination among internet users known as “fat fingers” — a tendency to hit the wrong keys and enter misspelled trademarks or brands. Like phishing, typosquatting is a type of social engineering that tricks people into visiting websites they didn’t intend to visit. These schemes can harm both consumers and the businesses whose names are abused. Connection to cybersquatting Typosquatting is connected to cybersquatting, where someone registers a site’s domain name that includes a trademark and then tries to profit by selling that name to the trademark owner. With typosquatting, fraudsters register URLs that are common misspellings of company and brand names. For example, a bad actor might register landswnd.com and lnadsend.com. Then, when users try to visit the site of retailer Lands’...