Counter-typosquatting techniques?
December 2, 2013 9:59 AM Subscribe
Do large companies systematically register domains that would result from URL typos? If so, how do they go about it?
For instance, "azamon.com" redirects to Amazon. Clearly, someone at Amazon at some point realized that it wouldn't be completely insane for someone to accidentally type "azamon," or else someone typosquatted it and sold it to them.
So do big companies have departments that are in charge of just, like, randomly typing in the URL and finding out what they most often typo? Or do they have big data-crunching efforts that just shift letters around or replace letters with those on adjacent keys?
This is just me idly wondering -- I have no website that I feel I need to protect, nor am I looking for a way to come up with the next great typo'd link that I can sell to Jeff Bezos.
For instance, "azamon.com" redirects to Amazon. Clearly, someone at Amazon at some point realized that it wouldn't be completely insane for someone to accidentally type "azamon," or else someone typosquatted it and sold it to them.
So do big companies have departments that are in charge of just, like, randomly typing in the URL and finding out what they most often typo? Or do they have big data-crunching efforts that just shift letters around or replace letters with those on adjacent keys?
This is just me idly wondering -- I have no website that I feel I need to protect, nor am I looking for a way to come up with the next great typo'd link that I can sell to Jeff Bezos.
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Not just big companies, either. My wife's business has registered a couple of alternate domain names based on what they feel would be a common typo or mis-spelling. It's really no different than registering the .com and .net versions of your domain. You just have them redirect to the correct domain.
It's a relatively common practice in any internet-savvy marketing department. I think domain registrars such as the loathed GoDaddy offer such variations whenever you register a domain.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:30 AM on December 2, 2013