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From the News Desk
Thursday, 29. November 2007
“What’s In a Name” Says McAfee
Security firm McAfee has released a new report warning of the ever-present threat of typo-squatting.
The report named as “What’s in a Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007″ throws light on typo-squatters registering domains using commonly misspelled popular brands, products, and people with the aim of redirecting consumers to alternative websites.
“Typo-squatting illustrates the ‘Wild West’ mentality that remains dominant in major portions of the Internet. Even at its most benign, this practice takes consumers to places they never intended, and penalizes legitimate businesses by siphoning customers away, or making them pay a charge to re-acquire customers. At its worst, typo-squatting leads to online scams, ‘get-rich-quick’ offers, and other risks,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president at McAfee Avert Labs.
McAfee found Games, Airlines, Mainstream Media, Adult and Tech are some of the most popular categories targeted by typo-squatters.
Children's sites are heavily targeted; more than 60 of the most squatted sites are designed to appeal to the 18-and-under demographic. Some typo-squatters also take advantage of typing errors to expose children to pornography. More than 46,000, or 2.4 per cent, of the typo-squatter sites tested included some adult content.
UK, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy are five non-US countries to have the highest chance of typo-squatting. While Netherlands, Israel, Denmark, Brazil, and Finland sites have least cases of such squatting.
On the up side, the report found that many search firms, such as Yahoo and Google, routinely offer alternatives for common misspellings, reducing the likelihood of landing at a typo-site by accident.
McAfee evaluated nearly 1.9 million typographical variations of 2,771 of the most popular domain names to arrive at these results.
Cyber-squatting cases filed with the World Intellectual Property Organisation's arbitration system increased by 20 per cent in 2005 and 25 per cent in 2006.
The report named as “What’s in a Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007″ throws light on typo-squatters registering domains using commonly misspelled popular brands, products, and people with the aim of redirecting consumers to alternative websites.
“Typo-squatting illustrates the ‘Wild West’ mentality that remains dominant in major portions of the Internet. Even at its most benign, this practice takes consumers to places they never intended, and penalizes legitimate businesses by siphoning customers away, or making them pay a charge to re-acquire customers. At its worst, typo-squatting leads to online scams, ‘get-rich-quick’ offers, and other risks,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president at McAfee Avert Labs.
McAfee found Games, Airlines, Mainstream Media, Adult and Tech are some of the most popular categories targeted by typo-squatters.
Children's sites are heavily targeted; more than 60 of the most squatted sites are designed to appeal to the 18-and-under demographic. Some typo-squatters also take advantage of typing errors to expose children to pornography. More than 46,000, or 2.4 per cent, of the typo-squatter sites tested included some adult content.
UK, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy are five non-US countries to have the highest chance of typo-squatting. While Netherlands, Israel, Denmark, Brazil, and Finland sites have least cases of such squatting.
On the up side, the report found that many search firms, such as Yahoo and Google, routinely offer alternatives for common misspellings, reducing the likelihood of landing at a typo-site by accident.
McAfee evaluated nearly 1.9 million typographical variations of 2,771 of the most popular domain names to arrive at these results.
Cyber-squatting cases filed with the World Intellectual Property Organisation's arbitration system increased by 20 per cent in 2005 and 25 per cent in 2006.
