Typosquatting

plashdoy writes: "Oh what a tangled Web we weave: ZDNN article on Typosquatting. Don't you hate it when stuff like this is more profitable than your honest efforts?" I have no problem with typo squatting as a whole, but there are a dozen Slashdot typo sites, one of which frames Slashdot with a 2nd banner ad. Now I don't care ... but this fools about 1 person every 2-3 days, and they flame me for selling out and doing something so horrible as framing Slashdot for extra ad space. So I guess typo sites that frame the site are pretty slimey, but as long as the typo site provides a link to the correct site, I'm totally cool with 'em.

Comments

slashdit

[Money__]

Interestingly, slashdit.org is still available.

Re:slashdit

[gatorade123]

Seem like maybe a few of the typo rip-offs can't quite keep up with the load from a real slashdot-ing.

Re:Hotmail and Hotmale ain't the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made me gay. Bastard!

Re:you know...

[arcade]

actually, you'd be pretty stupid not to bookmark you favourite sites anyways..

Why on earth should I bother bookmarking slashdot, when it takes far much effort to use the bookmarks-button, than to just type 'slashdot.org' ?

You only show that you probably have a patethic 400keys-per-minute typingspeed. ;)


--

Re:OrangoTango

[SimonMcC]

Blink.com do the handiest web tool I have ever seen, I couldn't survive without it now! Get at your favs/bookmarks from anywhere, on anything, import your current bookmarks from Netscape & IE. Admitadly, IE integration is better than netscape (you can drag and drop links in IE, but you have to choose a menu option in NS) Just plain top!

Re:Typos'

[Periwinkle]

This actually happened during my software engineerring class one day. We were working on our software eng project using the domain name myslo.com and someone instead typed in mysol.com. Amusing as hell.

Of course, it's college... and everyone had a good laugh...

The best qoute from that quarter, from my professor: "I only visit porn sites to make sure that they are within the law." Yeah right ;)
I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!

Re:The Evil Potential for this

[pne]

Perhaps people don't realize the huge problem associated with typo-squatting. Perhaps I should make a site named "paypall.com" and steal a few million credit-card numbers (which people are willing to give me because the _think_ they typed the address of a legit site).

You mean like the scam Rahoule described in Comment 156 to this article?

Re:What typo site?

[course]

They actually responded with a link, and apologies...
That's a typical example of bailing out at the first sign of danger if I ever saw one...
But still, can't blame them, they probably got alle the income they wanted from the site the second it got posted on /.

Re:New TLDs...

[eastMike]

Yes...that's a good idea. I can't count the number of times I've tried to go to slashdot.rog.

"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it."

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[ddstreet]

I think that it is more like an address.

Do you know exactly what the address of your local McDonalds is? I don't. But I know the sign on the front says 'McDonalds' and generally what its appearance is.

A McDonald's street address would correspond to a website's IP address. NOT its DNS name.

How many people make typos?

[kreyg]

about 1 person every 2-3 days, and they flame me for selling out

For every one who flames, there are probably several who never notice and several more who do but don't get worked up about it.

You can probably get a few hundred hits a day off of the ineptitude of others. Maybe they'll learn to use bookmarks someday (or just make /. their home page :-)

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[ddstreet]

Lat & Long and Street address are both ways of locating (or describing) a location. An IP address is also a way of describing a location. So an IP address can correspond to either a street address or lat & long. It depends on whether you're the type of person who looks up McDonald's lat & long and then uses GPS to get a Happy Meal. Perhaps you are.

most disturbing typosquatting I've stumbled upon..

[Wepeel]

I was attempting to search at google.com and instead I accidentally typed in gogole.com. This sends me to Bill Gate's personal website at microsoft.com, framed in an ad. Weird, eh?

Even stranger, I don't seem to remember an ad the first time I went there...

Don't forget whitehouse.com

[Ruthless_Advisorette]

Seems even the prez is cashing in on the online XXX industry.

Re:What typo site?

[protactin]

I don't see the problem with these particular sites (salshdot and slahsdot) framing /. as it's not as if the person who registered it is making any money... they're just a namezero accounts..?

Re:Typos'

[British]

And that's what pisses me off when I'm at work. Imagine you make one mistake in going to a regular friendly site, and instead get a porn site. It hits hard at work when there's a liberal Internet usage policy. What if it was an accident?

Re:you know...

[Pope]

actually, you'd be pretty stupid not to bookmark you favourite sites anyways...I never have to type any of the URLs to the sites I go to on a regular basis.

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

The url is a typo . .that's a *little funny ? ? ?

[Money__]

The url is a typo . .that's a *little funny, isn't it?

OT

[DrEldarion]

If we as humans are rational enough to see beyond physical differences, why do we need clothes?

Warmth?

-- Dr. Eldarion --

It doesn't bother me.

[cacheMan]

I hit this site about once a week. It kinda makes me laugh. The chances of you typing in an address and not knowing what you are going to find, and therefore being fooled by your typo are pretty slim. Are there that many examples of sites where your mistake isn't pretty obvious?

Now it's time for the obligatory go-at.cx link...

[EvilGwyn]

whoops :)

arg

[djocyko]

Salshdot's been slashdot'd

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[lw54]

Someone else is making bucks off your good rep, for $15 worth of capital. At best, somebody owes you a cut of the proceeds for your blood, sweat, and tears spent making a site yonder doofus could exploit.

If they are loading it in a frame, then Taco owes them a portion of the banner proceeds. :-)

typosquatting... clever...?

[mindcraft]

I think typosquatting is a darn clever idea! In fact, I registered my very own www.pnethouse.com last night ... hey what can I say? It seems to me this is a new type of business practice and quite simply its the "typer's" responsibility to type in the correct address. I mean, why aren't we all doing it??? -=mindcraft=-

Re:typosquatting... clever...?

[mindcraft]

if you think about it, it's mostly the porn industry that is involved with this typosquatting, & its for that reason why we are sometimes real careful typing when *parents* are around. so we're saying, hey its okay to have explicit porn sites--but having a misspelled domain is a big NO NO??? whatever

Microsfot.com

[BubbaFett]

Sometimes i like typosquatters...

http://www.microsfot.com/

Re:Phone companies did this long ago

[jtdubs]

odd sig... everyone loves phi and fibanocci i guess...

www.gogole.com

[letchhausen]

I misspelled Google the other day and accidentally typed in gogole and got the Bill Gates Home page complete with links to Micro-Soft. It ain't owned by M$ but it sure was weird. Even creepier was the link to pix of Bill inserting alleged vaccine into the mouths of children in India. It looked more like "You will take this Window upgrade and like it !"

Bill Gates personally overseeing the vaccination of third world countries to protect them from Linux!

use javascript to prevent that..

[Anonymous Coward]

check out http://www.builder.com/Programming/Stupid4/ss09.ht ml?tag=st.bl.7264.dir1.Stupid4_9 one of the few first posts that actually have content.. i'm a proud anonymous coward

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[ShaunC]

I have a feeling that if I went out on the street, put up a green sign with silver arches, and called it MacDonalds and started selling chicken sandwiches, that the company that has sold Billions and Billions would have proper recourse to land on me with a ton of lawyers.

Sure they would, because you were obviously capitalizing off McDonalds' name, logo, etc. while selling similar products. I forget the lawyerspeak for that, but it's something along the lines of "intent to mislead."

However, if you were to set up mcdonalsd.com and fill the site with porn banners or something, McDonald's wouldn't have a leg to stand on. There would be no confusing your porn-banner website with McDonalds' real site.

Shaun

Re:slsahdot.org

[cronio]

bah, every once in a while I have to...cause there's things I can do 100x easier in windows than in Linux...

(I knew someone was gonna catch that ;)

Kills frame-squatting dead.

[e_n_d_o]

setTimeout ("changePage()", 10);
function changePage()
{
if(self.parent.frames.length != 0)
self.parent.location="/index.html";
}

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[Haight6716]

A cleaner version of this:

<script language="JavaScript"><!--
// Break out of frames! I'm the tops!
if (window.location != window.parent.location) {
window.parent.location = window.location;
}
//--></script>

If you want a nav-bar, that's why your browser has that little toolbar at the top of the screen. Or you can implement a floating bar that sits in it's own trimmed-down browser window. Then you won't run afoul of frame-busting scripts.

-=Julian=-

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[Crag]

I'd take that bet. JavaScript is pretty pervasive now, IE 5.5 is forced down the throats of everyone who doesn't know they can choose their browser. For all the rest, Netscape 4.75 is the only browser that's useable on all too many of the popular sites. It's gotten so it's easier to get a new browser than only browse low-tech sites.

apt-get install netscape
rpmfind ...
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
etc

(what's a mac? is that a kind of truck? :)

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[mikpos]

Considering that it uses JavaScript, it would probably kill frame-squatting "slightly injured" instead of "dead".

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[mikpos]

Actually, I can browse most of the popular sites with my low-tech browser just fine. In the case that I need graphics (e.g. I want to look around an image gallery but pavuk will take too long), I get by just fine with Mozilla with Javascript turned off. In the odd case that Javascript is *needed* in order to browse the site, I can type in URLs by hand, or, more commonly, go somewhere else. I've yet to see an actual use for Javascript.

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[TrevorB]

CNN.com does this, and it's bloddy annoying... :)

I actually have a page on my own web site (not for external browsing, www.arbutus.cx/navbar/) that has a narrow (75px) left sidebar frame where I can navigate between my favorites. Easier for me that having to drag around my favorites whereever I go.

CNN likes to kill my happy little side frame, which is a reason why I usually go to it last. But I guess CNN would have more "frame linking" problems (especially linking directly to articles). I wouldn't be happy is Slashdot did this (the first link on my side navbar), but I guess I could live with it.

Re:Kills frame-squatting dead.

[pen]

I agree. I hate it when the webmaster thinks that he knows the way I should view the page. Providing a "break out of frames" link is nice, but doing it for me is ignorant.

Another thing I really hate is the opposite of this -- reframing. The site on which it bothers me the most is SecurityFocus. Who in the world thought that reframing a BugTraq post that I link to along with 7 other frames, putting into a tiny little frame and making it unreadable, is convenient? I ended up using other BugTraq archives.

--

Remember TCBY?

[InfiX]

this is not a new problem, and history shows that any who choose to fight against it might think twice. As many will recall there used to be a frozen yogurt franchise called "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt" which was rather popular. Along came a competitor which used the former's brand name to its own advantage: This Can't Be Yogurt. I Can't Believe It's Yogurt sued This Can't Be Yogurt, which was forced to change its name to TCBY. Interestingly, public opinion turned against I Can't Believe It's Yogurt because of this (and probably some other factors) and that franchise disappeared, leaving the newcomer TCBY in tact (still quite popular). Just something to consider...

Re:What typo site?

[brad_f]

Actually, I was the one that signed up salshdot.org w/ namezero, because of my poor typing skills...

anyway... i hope nobody is terribly offended by this.

DavesClassics and PayPal

[Rahoule]

I used to frequently visit an emulation site called Dave's Classics (www.davesclassics.com). I had to be very careful typing in the address because if I typed:

• www.daveclassics.com --> Porn site.
• www.davesclassic.com --> Porn site.

DavesClassics is now known as VintageGaming.com.

I remembered someone on Slashdot mentioning that PayPal had a problem with a site typosquatting on paypaI.com and grabbing people's credit card numbers. (The lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' are almost indistinguishable in some fonts...)

Re:www.salshdot.org

[brad_f]

I'll admit that I had namezero register salshdot.org to point to slashdot.org... becuase I can't type worth a darn. But, it isn't like i had salshdot.org go to some non-slashdot site...

stealing content? wtf are you talking about. Since when is a frameset stealing content. It isn't going to a pretend slashdot server or anything like that.. it just is slashdot for lazy people like me, who still type teh instead of the in word processors...

Doesn't sound so evile

[Dlugar]

This doesn't sound so bad to me. If the site is particularly misleading so the person doesn't realize he has landed on the wrong site, that might be grounds to sue. Other than that?

I don't see anything wrong with it.

Dlugar

Early typosquatting

[Viadd]

This article in the RISKS digest has a typosquatting case from 1994: The 1-800-OPERATER scam.

The very earliest case I now of is a guy who was jealous of his brother's success. So he set up his own town and put signs on the road pointing the other direction, leading to Reme.

What typo site?

[Digitalia]

Probably off topic, but what is the typo site that frames Slashdot?

Re:What typo site?

[Phrogman]

Meanwhile you have just generated additional revenue for them, as a horde of interested Slashdotters (like me) type in this URL to see what shows up.

Personally, while its kinda sleazy and I sure as hell would not be likely to engage in typosquatting, I do think its inventive. This attitude will survive until such time as someone start typosquatting one of my websites of course :)

Re:What typo site?

[B.D.Mills]

The concern I have with these typo sites that frame Slashdot is that there is an ad in the frame. One must then ask the question - who is getting the revenue for the banner ad? You can bet it's not Slashdot.

In my opinion, this is plagiarism. They are plagiarising Slashdot to raise money for themselves or a content provider. If someone was doing this to a commercial website I owned, I would be seeing lawyers and issuing "Cease and Desist" notices very quickly.

I think the best way of thwarting it tho is through Javascript. Something like:

if (top.location != self.location) top.location = self.location;

--

Re:What typo site?

[z4ce]

Very interesting. Those people aren't making a dime off of those ads. Somebody used namezero.com to register those sites. So namezero is making money off of it. Though, I'm sure namezero are not the people who registered it. FYI, namezero is a little vanity domain place, will give you free "web" dns services (That is, no access over the real dns entries, but access to the main frame on your own domain), and email for your domain.

Ian

Re:What typo site?

[lar]

www.salshdot.org frames slashdot...... see?

==

Re:What typo site?

[Trickster Coyote]

Also slahsdot.org takes you to the same framing site.

What about parody?

[ennui]

If memory serves me right, there are several sites that parody other sites using misspellings, malapropisms and other cute devices for their domain names, I think if mircosoft.com is deemed the IP of that Redmond company it just paves the way for more anti-freedom of expression legislation/court decisions on the Internet. And, cmdr, nobody but nobody better tell me what to link to (or not) regardless of what my domain name is or what I choose to do with it. Stop internet abuse by technical means, not legislation.

Just had one today

[bluesclues]

trying to go www.infoseek.com, typed www.inofseek.com, took me to altavista

Be sure to check out INVESTER.com

[socratic method]

Pretty Funny... www.invester.com

Interesting

[Money__]

I know this is offtopic, but there's interesting news today from the Clinton Administration about the people thay've had over for whitehouse coffees. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US /Campaign_Finance/

Re:Typos'

[Kierthos]

*nod* Most of the typosquatting areas are simply advertising sites, such as most of the types squatters listed a few days ago on MSNBC.com. (The article is no longer listed, or I would have linked it.)

The typosquatters included typo'd version of washingtonpost.com, yahoo.com, and microsoft.com. (The last one surprised me a bit. You'd think that microsoft would have accidentally acquired all of the typos around their name...)

Like I said, most of these were advertising sites, shilling various banner ads and the like. A couple were porn sites, but not very many compared to the total list.

Kierthos

Re:money.

[Signal 11]

Install junkbuster. Install it on all you friend's machines, install it at work.. install it at libraries.. block those advertisements.

--

Mews sites

[troyboy]

I have set up a few typo-sites that are based on a common misspelling of "news." The sites are non-commercial and I get no ad money. Unfortunately, I get very few hits (less than 20/day each)...

See foxmews.com, cbsmews.com, and nbcmews.com.

Re:slsahdot.org

[jayhawk88]

Danm, thast pritty sweeet, dued!

Sometimes typosquatting is good

[Drashcan]

e.g. when the framing website adds something to the site: an extra thematical index or a thorough search engine.

I for instance miss a search engine on Slashdot which would be able of searching through ***all*** submissions and comments ever posted (I don't even know whether Slashdot keeps all submissions and comments). It would also be cool if the search engine would have multiple options like threshold for comments etc.

Just an idea
the skunk

How to prevent typosquatting

[yuri benjamin]

When you register your domain, register common mis-spellings at the same time. Then you own the name and the typos. When I start my own company, I will register as many variations of my domain as I can think of.

New TLDs...

[the_tsi]

Won't it be great when we can register .cmo domains? The number of times I've tried surfing to yahoo.cmo can't even be counted in binary on two hands and two feet.

-Chris

"Hotnail" prompts for login.

[CDanek]

Cute.

location.replace() - Please!

[Zinho]

These "frame breaking" scripts have been around for at least the last three years (that's when they became popular, anyway), but most of them cause problems for the poor web surfer. If you simply assign a new value to the location attibute it effectively disables the "back" button on the browser. This is because it creates a new element in the history array, so if you try to go back where you came from, it still remembers the last page you put in the frame and executes its javascript again - sending you forward to the "unframed" state.

Use the location.replace(URL) method instead; it replaces the current history entry, essectially forgetting that you were ever there. The back button still works, and everyone is happy. Unless, of course, they actually wanted to go back to slashd0t.0rg...

Re:slsahdot.org

[cronio]

System error

while serving slsahdot.org /index.html (referer=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/ 23/1733257&mode=thread, agent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; ACS-255; DigExt))
error while executing /slsahdot.org/www/index.html:
deferred at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MLDBM.pm line 30
MLDBM::Serializer::deserialize('MLDBM::Serializer: :Storable=HASH(0x858a098)', 969744325) called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MLDBM.pm line 155
MLDBM::FETCH('MLDBM=HASH(0x858a080)', 'main.lastmod') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Utils.pm line 245
HTML::Mason::Utils::access_data_cache('cache_file' , '/home/httpd/data/cache/slsahdot.org+2fwww+2findex .html', 'action', 'retrieve') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 217
HTML::Mason::Request::cache('HTML::Mason::Request: :ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Commands .pm line 65
HTML::Mason::Commands::mc_cache() called at /home/httpd/data/obj/slsahdot.org/www/index.html line 14
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Componen t::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 607
HTML::Mason::Request::comp1('HTML::Mason::Request: :ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', 'HASH(0x8589724)', 'HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0) ') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 532
HTML::Mason::Request::comp('HTML::Mason::Request:: ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', 'HASH(0x8589724)', 'HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0) ') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 144
eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 144
HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request:: ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', '/slsahdot.org/www/index.html') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 635
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request_1('HTML ::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x8520b14)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)', 'HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a 4)', undef) called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 321
eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 321
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML:: Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x8520b14)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)') called at /etc/httpd/conf/handler.pl line 55
HTML::Mason::handler('Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)') called at /dev/null line 0
eval {...} called at /dev/null line 0
HTML::Mason::Request::__ANON__('deferred at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MLDBM.pm line 30^J^IMLD...') called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/Carp.pm line 280
Carp::confess('deferred') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MLDBM.pm line 30
MLDBM::Serializer::deserialize('MLDBM::Serializer: :Storable=HASH(0x858a098)', 969744325) called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MLDBM.pm line 155
MLDBM::FETCH('MLDBM=HASH(0x858a080)', 'main.lastmod') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Utils.pm line 245
HTML::Mason::Utils::access_data_cache('cache_file' , '/home/httpd/data/cache/slsahdot.org+2fwww+2findex .html', 'action', 'retrieve') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 217
HTML::Mason::Request::cache('HTML::Mason::Request: :ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Commands .pm line 65
HTML::Mason::Commands::mc_cache() called at /home/httpd/data/obj/slsahdot.org/www/index.html line 14
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Componen t::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 607
HTML::Mason::Request::comp1('HTML::Mason::Request: :ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', 'HASH(0x8589724)', 'HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0) ') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 532
HTML::Mason::Request::comp('HTML::Mason::Request:: ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', 'HASH(0x8589724)', 'HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x8580bf0) ') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 144
eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/Request. pm line 144
HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request:: ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a4)', '/slsahdot.org/www/index.html') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 635
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request_1('HTML ::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x8520b14)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)', 'HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x85813a 4)', undef) called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 321
eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/HTML/Mason/ApacheHa ndler.pm line 321
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML:: Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x8520b14)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)') called at /etc/httpd/conf/handler.pl line 55
HTML::Mason::handler('Apache=SCALAR(0x8587fb4)') called at /dev/null line 0
eval {...} called at /dev/null line 0

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[BadlandZ]

Not even, it's totally fair. If they pay to register a typo domain, they can do what ever they want with it.

IHMO, here's the ranking from ok to sleezy:

1. Sorry, you screwed up, you wanted to go here. This info brought to you by AD HERE.
2. Slam parady sites.
3. Sleezy banner ad in frame above real site Sleezy is sleezy, and everyone knows it. Time will brand the loosers who do sleezy things with very bad PR to the point where they are lower than Porn sites in the IT industry. If they are honest, they earned the money they get. If not, they better be saving thier pennys, because the industry will screw them hard in the next 5 years and they will need every cent they can rip off now.

Re:Reminds me...

[jjoyce]

Oh, it used to be porn.

--
You don't become a failure until you are content with being one.

This reminds me...

[b1t r0t]

This reminds me of the time when AT&T came up with "1-800-OPERATOR". Well, seems lots of people couldn't spell, and tried dialing "1-800-OPERATER". Which just happened to be a random 800 number inside of MCI. Which MCI quickly routed to their own 1-800-COLLECT number!

And that's why the phone police on the TV ads now tell you to dial 1-800-CALL-ATT.

Re:you know...

[Uberminky]

I don't have Slashdot bookmarked, and I don't consider myself stupid.. I just type "s" in the URL box and let iCab's line completion fill in the rest. A simple, quick "s - return" is probably a lot faster than your bookmark.. (I've also noticed that I rarely use my bookmarks at all.. I have so many, and I can type out enough of the URL faster than it'd take to find and choose the bookmark with the mouse..)

. ._ _ .__. ___ ___ ._ _. _.. _. .. .

IMHO: Most interesting Slashdot typo site

[milkman1]

This site has graphs and statics for slashdot typos since Feb. http://slsahdot.org

Re:IMHO: Most interesting Slashdot typo site

[milkman1]

Well that site seems to have died a painful death, but you can still see the statistics at: http://ns2.asimov.net/~cricket/grapher.cgi?target= %2Fslashdot-m isspellers%2Fslsahdot-org&ranges=d%3Aw%3Am%3Ay

So how would you fix it?

[Twid]

OK, assuming the problem of "typosquatting" is a real one that needs to be dealt with, how would you create an enforcable rule?

For example, if I owned frito.com and you owned fritto.com, a perfectly legitimate word (maybe a chef's site, for example), is that a violation?

How would you quantify this in a way NSI and others could enforce? It seems like any solution would require subjective review by a committee, and that means that it would be political, capricious, and subject to manipulation like the WTO.

Personally, I think the internet advertising market will change in coming years, and just serving up a banner won't make you the 5 cents a click that people claim to receive now. This will make running a "typosquatting" site less lucrative. I also see no difference between "typosquatting" and perfume knockoffs, rolex watch knockoffs, kit cars, and other sorts of ways of leeching off a major brand name. It's a healthy part of how capitalism works.

The only big problem I see is intentional deceit, such as the recent problem with bank of america where someone was trying to deceive people into sending in personal info. We have existing fraud laws to cover that.

So, unless someone is trying to trick you into thinking that they are really bankofamerica.com or slashdot.org, I don't have a problem with "typosquatting".

Reminds me...

[jjoyce]

...of the time I was at work and I accidently typed

http://www.doanload.com

into the browser.

--
You don't become a failure until you are content with being one.

Re:you know...

[Wakko Wanrer]

I wanna see what breed of dork it takes to fuck up this magnificently.

Oh wait...that was me.

-A.P.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

TO say the least

[CAIMLAS]

Typeosquatting is bad, but what's even worse is when porn/advertising takes a site that is in reference to something that's popular - say, descent.com. I've not tried going there in quite a long time, but back when I played Descent almost exclusively (man, what a while ago!) The site was a porn site. Looking for a patch/map/mod and finding porn is not fun.

-------
CAIMLAS

Re:Typos'

[fm6]

No, the goatse.cx links are completely different. There doesn't seem to be any profit motive there, just a desire to gross us out. Whoever does this could make some money if they set up an exploding-windows site and used their tricks to decoy slashdotters to it.

Re:Phone companies did this long ago

[Donat]

The phone companies are still doing this. When we ordered phone service we got signed up for long distance service through a company named "The Phone Company"
I think all of this has gone too far, domain names should be first come first served. Not quick enough to get the domain you wanted, too bad, think of a new one or attempt to buy it off the person who did register it for whatever they want to charge you for it.

Re:money.

[Alan]

Well actually I was speaking in a metaphorical sense.... ie: advertising in general :) Junkbuster isn't going to help get rid of the huge plackards I have to endure on the way to work and home every day.

INCORRECT

[scribblej]

My Dad ws one of the owners of TCBY, and I mean the chain, not just a couple of stores. So I've never heard this story and doubt it's validity, particularly considering that TCBY always did stand for "THE COUNTRY'S BEST YOGURT" and has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the product is actually a yogurt-derivative.

So there you have it.

Re:Who cares?

[Abigail]

Banner ads are a stupid way to generate revenue because anyone who's likely to spend money will _look_ for what they want, rather than being convinced they want something by what amounts to an online billboard.

Oh, really? Banner ads are not that different than ads on television and in magazines: mass exposure of a name or brand, grouped around content that hopefully has a higher density of your target audience than average. Name recognition and image building is extremely important to become a successful product. There might be a few exceptions, but you didn't really think that Coca-Cola or Microsoft would be as big as they are without the ads, do you? Billions of dollars a year are put into advertisement, and trust me, most companies would not do that if it didn't boost sales.

Witness the frequent "AOL keyword" phrase in radio ads.

The "AOL keyword" namespace isn't in any way bigger than the DNS namespace. If it becomes popular as an alternative for domains, you get the same problems as you find now with domains. Except that it's all in the hands on one company. You won't get many domainsquatters, no, you have one: AOL, and it's got *everything* squattable. (It would be the same for any other company trying to make such "name spaces"). Oh, and you don't really think that Ford Motors will say, "we already have ford.com, we don't mind if someone else uses 'AOL keyword: Ford'", do you?

Domain names should not be typed in by hand very often. Use bookmarks and search engines.

Well, to put something in a bookmarks file, you first have to find the address somehow. Search engines are nice, but not an alternative. Could you imagine a radio ad for Xyzzy soap saying "Visit out web site, go to your favourite search engine, search for 'xyzzy soap', and find us in the huge list of returned matches". No self respecting marketing person is going to fall for that - nor will the public accept it. Besides, search enignes fall for the "typo trap" as well; and you don't even need different domain names for that. Also, Yahoo was mentioned as one of the companies with typo sites.... you really thing that using a search engine to go to yahoo is going to solve that typo problem?

I forsee a day when there are multiple orthogonal online namespaces akin to Yahoo, and URLs will be passed around as "http://namespace/name/restofurl/"

Well, that's how it all started. But nowadays, everything needs to have its own domain name - and it isn't just companies. Just look at the postings with this story, how many people here are saying "I have .(com|net|org)". Just like big companies, geeks want their own domain too. It's all vanity and the phobie to type punctuation characters.

My favorite bakery has a site at SantaCruz,CA/Buttery (by city)" which would translate to http://santacruz.ca.us/buttery/

Cute, but since Henry Ford mass produced cars (and before that, railroads), we no longer live in a society where people spend 364 days a year in their own village. The world, and especially the electronic world is global. Geographic domains don't work in general, and any attempt to do more than two-letter toplevel domains has been a failure. And even two-letter domains don't really work well. Or do you really think all the .to and .cx domains are located in the Pacific? And then there's the obvious problem of people and companies relocating... Would you want to have your email address change when you move?

-- Abigail

Typosquatting rules!

[KillBot]

Back in the day when you could buy a domain from nsi, and forget to pay them (almost worth their service!), we got blairewitch.com. It made 3,000 hits a day for a while, which was more than we had ever seen back then. We whipped up an original site, made a lnk to the official site, and made a nice wad o' cash from banner ads and amazon commissions.

Re:Phone companies did this long ago

[empesey]

It's a little known secret that Slashdot is really just a coverup for Fibonacci expansion. Some plot to take over the stock market or some such thing. You think those karma points are handed out randomly? No sir. There's meaning behind those there numbers. Why do you think logged in users start at 1 and non logged in users start at 0? Think about it.

But don't tell anyone.

--

Be careful on exciite.com, popup hell.

[Acinonyx]

The java popup windows on there put most porn sites to shame.

No, I'm not going to turn java off either, I don't run into that problem enough to bother.

my all time fav

[small_dick]

reuter

...instead of the news service, you get "free web based email" -- just enter your uname and password.

who would have guessed the web could make our lives so simple?

Thanks for this funny link.

[EdlinUser]

I can just see some dork landing on this site and flaming CT for "selling out". Funny to me, maybe not for CT tho.

ICANN?

[Masem]

Unless there's a beef with ICANN that you refuse to use their arbitration services, this sounds like an ideal case of cybersquatting (I've seen ICANN rulings where typo sites have lost on trademarks). Unfortunately, there's a somewhat signifigent fee involved ($500) to start arbitration, but particularly for the site that frames you, there's the cybersquatting (and making money issue), and that framing other sites intentionally has been considered somewhat iffy by the courts in the past. IANAL, of course.

Re:slsahdot.org

[Teancom]

Buahahahha!!!! slsahdot.org just got /.'ed!!!! That is the coolest thing I have seen all day.

Records of failed DNS lookups?

[mgroeber]

This reminds me of an idea I had quite a while ago: it would be kind of interesting to see the logs of *failed* DNS lookups for the name servers of some big ISPs. This should give some pretty good suggestions for those still unregistered domains that could be worthwhile targets, because it tells you what people actually do type into their URL entry field, and allows accurate prediction of hits.

Did anyone with access to, say, a university's DNS ever look at this systematically?

Phone companies did this long ago

[empesey]

There was a big scam with the phone companies doing something similar. Seems some phone companies called themselves "It doesn't matter" and "Whatever", etc. When they'd ask you what phone company you wanted, if you replied "It doesn't matter", then you were automatically given them as your long distance company.

I'm actually surprised it's taken the net this long to come up with this scam.

--

What's the problem?

[pacc]

Typosquatting seems OK to me,
the alternative would be that any given trademark etc. would include permutated characters and similar words.
Any name hard enough to make it possible to spell wrong by _anyone_ , i.e more than 4 characters, is just a bad name for the net.

Re:Typos'

[AntiNorm]

And be careful of Hotmail, and Beef-Cake.com ( A South Park Site). One wrong keystroke and it's porn city. Unless, of course, that is what you are looking for....

Or the White House's web site. Not that our current President would mind having pr0n around...

=================================

Re:you know...

[Fishstick]

Right-o

One of the actually useful features I like in IE (what I'm stuck using at work) is the address history. I usually type 'sla' and hit the down arrow once and hit enter. Stuff I visit everyday I just don't bother to bookmark.

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[troyboy]

I guess our disagreement comes down to whether a URL is more like an address or a name on a sign. I think that it is more like an address. You type in where you want your browser to take you; you don't look at a list of URLs and say "look, there is McDonald's; I want to go there" but end up at MacDonald's. I guess if the name turns up in a search engine, your analogy would be closer. So, maybe it's more of an empirical question about how people browse.

Who cares?

[Crag]

"I don't agree, Taco. Someone else is making bucks off your good rep, for $15 worth of capital. At best, somebody owes you a cut of the proceeds for your blood, sweat, and tears spent making a site yonder doofus could exploit."

So? It's not taking anything from CmdrTaco or Slashdot, except perhaps causing some less than briliant individuals to think SlashDot has sold out...even more. :)

The real discrepancies here are: Banner ads are dumb and DNS is showing its age.

Banner ads are a stupid way to generate revenue because anyone who's likely to spend money will _look_ for what they want, rather than being convinced they want something by what amounts to an online billboard.

Domain names should not be typed in by hand very often. Use bookmarks and search engines. I forsee a day when there are multiple orthogonal online namespaces akin to Yahoo, and URLs will be passed around as "http://namespace/name/restofurl/". People will get used to it, and the namespaces will have short names like "xy.com", so people will say things like, "I love the recipies over at juliachild (via xy)" or "My favorite bakery has a site at SantaCruz,CA/Buttery (by city)" which would translate to http://santacruz.ca.us/buttery/.

I know it would be impossible to convince the companies to move this direction on their own, but eventually the existing namespaces will be so poluted as to be virtually useless and some alternative will prove to be far more attractive. Witness the frequent "AOL keyword" phrase in radio ads.

As for the MacDonald's analogy, I disagree with the equivalence because the cost of correcting the mistake is a lot higher in meat-space. If you tried to pull that trick, you'd get a lot more customers just because they're too lazy to go to the real McDonald's when they realize they've been fooled. Online, when you realize you've made a mistake, it's a lot easier to correct.

Hm, now I feel like having McDonald's...

Re:Typos'

[fm6]

The interesting thing is if you look for sites with "softcore" in their URLs or search words, you will end up at sites that are very un-soft indeed. Porn sites will do anything for a few extra hits, even to the point of trying to hook people who've expressed a positive disinterest. That's why there is so much porn-related spam and email virusing. It's also why sites that are even marginally illicit (such as warez sites) often feature multiple porn popups.

slsahdotted

[G-funk]

I think you've been slsahdotted. All i got was an error :-)

Blast from the past

[plagiarist]

Remember last winter's etoys vs. etoy civil suit?

You can easily make an entire lawsuit out of this breed of dork....

What about..

[Klerck]

What about Slashcock?

OrangoTango

[weston]

If you want a nav-bar, that's why your browser has that little toolbar
at the top of the screen. Or you can implement a floating bar...

I beleive there's a company called
OrangoTango that's working ona product to
do some of these things and more. Browser/Location independant
bookmarks, preferences, etc... available anywhere, from any
browser... there must be more to it if you simply
implement these by making floating js bars.

Kill the typosquatters!

[ahaning]

Hey, this could be a great way to get back at the typosquatters. With the viewership of slashdot being so large, if we all find these sites and post links to them and click them, we could potentially give them so much traffic that they'd go down and actually loose revenue.

With that, here's a few Google typosquatters:

http://www.hoogle.com/ - redirect to boogle.com; a beautified google.com
http://www.googol.com/ - some guy's personal site
http://www.gppgle.com/ - google.com with register.com ad at bottom

There are lots more. So, post links, click links (repeatedly), and hopefully kill a typosquatter!

Making bucks off someone else's rep

[warpeightbot]

I don't agree, Taco. Someone else is making bucks off your good rep, for $15 worth of capital. At best, somebody owes you a cut of the proceeds for your blood, sweat, and tears spent making a site yonder doofus could exploit.

I have a feeling that if I went out on the street, put up a green sign with silver arches, and called it MacDonalds and started selling chicken sandwiches, that the company that has sold Billions and Billions would have proper recourse to land on me with a ton of lawyers. But here in cyberspace, it's *just* a typo?

I don't think so. And even if it is, when folks like the 800 pound gorilla from Redmond get into the act, it won't stay that way long, DOJ lawsuits aside. And for once, I think that's as it should be. www.whitehouse.com indeed, don't try that not-a-link unless you're 18.....

--
That Isaac Hayes, he's one baaaad mutha...(Hush yo mouth!)
I'm just talkin' 'bout Chef! (We can dig it!)

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[troyboy]

Your McDonald's analogy is imperfect. On the web, people don't go to the typo-site because they believe that it is McDonald's. They go there because they mistyped the address.

A closer analogy would be if Burger King set up a store at 123 N. Main St., while McDonald's was at 123 S. Main. St.. People know where they are, they just got the address wrong. The misdialed phone number analogy is also good...

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[ddstreet]

A closer analogy would be if Burger King set up a store at 123 N. Main St., while McDonald's was at 123 S. Main. St.. People know where they are, they just got the address wrong. The misdialed phone number analogy is also good...

No, your analogy is imperfect...
a real analogy would be someone opening a store that looked exactly (or almost exactly) like McDonalds, and called it MacDonalds (notice the extra 'a'). THAT's a typo analogy.

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[apathetic]

and then when you ordered they ran to mcdonalds and stole the food you ordered

Re:Making bucks off someone else's rep

[pen]

Wouldn't the IP address correspond to the location's longitude and latitude?

--

Re:not totaly realted but

[Tairan]

Slashdot.com works, but all links are hard encoded to point to Slashdot.org. And yes, CmdTaco has complained about misuse of TLDs.... "no, those ads do not generate us any profit..."

A great reference site

[Twid]

Quick followup, I found a great reference site for domain name battles at http://www.domainbattles.com .

It's up to date, informative, and very interesting, for example, White Pine lost a battle to take over CU-SEEME.NET, but HP won a battle for HPWEB.COM.

-Todd

Flap of the butterfly's dot

[Dollyknot]

One dot in the wrong place and you are in the wrong place.

Mr. Taco

[dmacon]

There's a time to be tolerant and a time to launch man-eating lawyers. I think typo-squatters is not acceptable at all.

An uncool note

[fm6]

... as long as the typo site provides a link to the correct site, I'm totally cool with 'em.

Rob, you might want to run this policy past Andover's lawyers. You might not think it's a big deal if somebody uses your name to cop a few ad hits. But I assume you do want to retain control of the name itself. 'Cause if you don't, there might someday be a cable channel called "Slashdot -- News that Matters! (a Time-Warner company)" and you won't be able to do anything about it.

A simple nasty fact: in order to keep a name, you have to actively protect it. Maybe you think /. typo pirates aren't doing you any harm, and that it's uncool to hassle them. But you may end up having to choose between being cool and continuing to control a name you put a lot of work into building up.

Re:Typos'

[SlashGeek]

Hmm... I wonder how many /. readers have accidentally gone to Goatsex links while browsing /. at work?

The Curse And Blessing Of A Court Ruling

[d.valued]

The one nice thing is that the aggrieved corps can slide a few legal noticii to NSI, DomainBank, etc. and "inform" them of the (probable) copyright or trademark infringement.

After all, you don't own the domain anyway.

revenue???

[vla1den]

revenue???
Seriously, I believe for most /.ers it was easier to look in to source then deactivate junkbuster/webwasher, whatever.

whois "typosquatting bastards"

[tonyz2k]

Registrant: NAMEZERO.COM (SLAHSDOT-DOM) 51 University Ave, Suite K LOS GATOS, CA 95030 US Domain Name: SLAHSDOT.COM Administrative Contact: NAMEZERO.COM (NC3029-ORG) admin@NAMEZERO.COM NAMEZERO.COM PO Box 637 LOS GATOS, CA 95031-0637 US 4083950426 Fax- 4083950436 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Technical Coordinator (TC6611-ORG) tech@NAMEZERO.COM namezero.com, Inc. 51 University Ave, Suite K Los Gatos, CA 95030 US 408-395-0426 Fax- - 408-395-0436 Billing Contact: NAMEZERO.COM-WN-BCIA (NC3027-ORG) bills@NAMZERO.COM NAMEZERO.COM 262 East Main Street LOS GATOS, CA 95030 US 4083950426 Fax- - 4083950436 Record last updated on 11-Aug-2000. Record expires on 11-Aug-2001. Record created on 11-Aug-2000. Database last updated on 22-Sep-2000 13:38:31 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: GREEN.IDIRECTIONS.COM 216.34.13.231 ORANGE.IDIRECTIONS.COM 216.34.13.234

www.salshdot.org

[DanThe1Man]

www.salshdot.org is not making a profit on Slashdot. The site is useing 'Name Zero', a company that gives a free URL for that extra ad window.

They are not making a profit, but they are still stealing content.

Re:www.salshdot.org

[diggman]

From a whois search, you have no idea who "the guy" is. You only know that namezero.com registered it. "The guy" that registered with namezero.com just asked them to register the site and make that address space available.

Namezero.com makes money from the banner, but unless you can prove "the guy" owns namezero.com, you can't prove he makes anything off of salshdot.org.

Diggs

Typos'

[Mike the Mac Geek]

And be careful of Hotmail, and Beef-Cake.com ( A South Park Site). One wrong keystroke and it's porn city. Unless, of course, that is what you are looking for....

Re:Typos'

[Fishstick]

I did the first time.

Re:Typos'

[iamriley]

Here's a >microsoft typo site (microft.com) that's kind of funny. I accidentally hit it a couple of weeks ago and ended up spending a few minutes exploring it.

Re:Typos'

[Fishstick]

This actually happened at my office. Someone typoed a domain and was sent into javascript pop-up porno land. They were really worried about losing their job because someone had been recently fired for visiting porno sites from work. They went to their boss and let 'em know right away what happened. Turns out that the monitoring software on the firewall did flag this and an e-mail went to the boss and HR. Of course nothing serious happened because the policy is to notify management and let them investigate, and in this case it was clearly unintentional.

The ass that got fired was warned multiple times about his browsing and chose to continue. He had a pretty sizeable collection on his harddrive, looked like the majority came from e-mail attachments he was exchanging with his buddies. I couldn't understand that one. Guess he was pretty compulsive about it.

Right after this clown was fired, a memo went out reminding everyone of the policy and that everything was logged and sniffed. Guess a bunch of people were warned and cleaned up their act since. I'm no prude, like to see some skin myself once in a while but it completely escapes me why someone would need to do this while at work.

Re:Typos'

[jesser]

it's always those fucking pages with 550 popup windows and banner ads -- there is no porn. That's what really bugs me.

Mozilla bug 29346 has been futured, so I'm afraid we might have to live with this problem for a while longer (the multiple popup ads, not the lack of porn).

--

Re:Typos'

[British]

Yeah I was hit by goatse 1 or 2 times(it was from some guy's page linking supposedly to a DecSS mirror). Fortunately I'm quick with the keyboard, and alt-f4 in a second, turned my back to make sure my sup wasnt around.

Re:Typos'

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if it were "porn city," as you say. But it's always those fucking pages with 550 popup windows and banner ads -- there is no porn. That's what really bugs me.

slsahdot.org

[modus]

I like my typo site, complete with cricket-based monitoring of how many people have misspelled it on any given day:

slsahdot.org

No money in it, of course, I just got tired of getting a DNS lookup error everytime I misspelled it that particular way.

Re:slsahdot.org

[arcade]

while serving slsahdot.org /index.html (referer=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/ 23/1733257&mode=thread, agent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; ACS-255; DigExt))

You're using WINDOWS. yuck...

--

Re:slsahdot.org

[dg123]

cool !

I reckon they need to be tortured slowly to death.

[The Famous Druid]

The other day I mis-typed the name of one of the popular search engines (I was on a workmates PC, so didn't have a bookmark) and the typo-squatter it took me to was running what was proudly proclaimed to be
"The Official Internet Incest Site"

Now lets leave aside the legalities for the moment (I had broken local law just by visiting the site), I figure people have a right to surf the web without being ambushed this way.

That's the problem with typo-squatting, it's basically fraud. It's like a retailer putting up false signs outside their stores, bait to get you in, then hit you with a hard sell once you're inside. It's deception, it's theft of my time and bandwidth.

If these people were providing something people actually wanted to find, they wouldn't have to ambush you, you'd go to their site voluntarily.

Phew, that was a nice rant, I feel much better now, thank you.

I hate that

[clinko]

I mean, i own donkeyhumper.com and would ya know it, someone bought donkeeyhumper.com. And would you belive it, the guy has the nerves to make donkeeyhumper.com a porn site! I cry myself to sleep just thinking about the people who accidentally go on that other site instead of quality donkey-humping action at donkeyhumper.com.

What is this world coming to?

Re:I hate that

[Traxton1]

Well, I used to have great reverence for my fellow /.ers. After this post, well, lets just say I'm a little disappointed.

He didn't include a link.

Re:I hate that

[jesser]

And would you belive it, the guy has the nerves to make donkeeyhumper.com a porn site!

An old slashdot comment gives a possible reason for this that goes beyond "steal users and get money from showing them porn ads"

--

Random redirection

[qux.net]

I've wondered what registering typo domains or other domains that aren't real but may be typed by someone looking for data, and doing a random redirect to somewhere else. Like I have at http://yafiygi.com/, except with a bunch of domains registered all bouncing off the server to random places...

Rights in misspellings

[Animats]

The only real problem is that somebody might be able to generate a legal theory under which "big names" get exclusive rights to everything that could possibly be a misspelling of the "big name".

As a business, "typosquatting" probably ranks with standing around with a "will work for food" sign, so it's not going to go beyond the joke level.

The Things People Register

[Lextext]

I'm constantly amazed at the things people register. It's not just typos. Someone registered yyaahhoooo.com

There's also been a run on Zs. z.com is owned my one registrant, zz.com is owned by someone else. zzz.com is in the hands of third owner. zzzz.com, zzzzz.com, zzzzzz.com, and zzzzzzz.com each have unique owners. Then one registrant appear to have 8 Zs through 29 Zs. In fact, the last time I checked, you have to go out to 30 Zs.com (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.com) in order to find a Z string that is registerable in .com.

Re:The Things People Register

[Zach Baker]

You actually checked all those? If I checked them, by the time I got to twenty Z's I would be the one saying "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

By the way, I'm sometimes amused by OneWordDomainNames.com. It has a list of what English-word domains are available (not in .com, of course!) and, intruigingly, of not-yet-paid-for expiring one-word .com domains.

The Evil Potential for this

[evilviper]

Perhaps people don't realize the huge problem associated with typo-squatting. Perhaps I should make a site named "paypall.com" and steal a few million credit-card numbers (which people are willing to give me because the _think_ they typed the address of a legit site). In short, there's far more risk involved than CmdrTaco has thought of.

Easy fix..

[PeelBoy]

Just put some JavaScript on the main page that busts out of frames (if they exist)..
-----------------------

Just for shits and giggles

[Accipiter]

I had to try some purposely misspelled domains. Here's what I've found:

www.widnows.com
www.micorsoft.com
www.gooogle.com
www.exciite.com/
www.microsofy.com
www.hotmaik.com

Here's a funny one:

www.netwroksolutions.com

And

www.networksloutions.com - which redirects to http://www.networksolutiond.com/, and provides a link to http://www.networksolutions.com/

You can probably come up with a LOT more than this list, just by entering misspelled domain names. Hell, it worked for me, and this is probably just a tiny sample of what's out there.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Even Cleaner

[OnyxMedia]

if (self != top) top.location.href = window.location.href; </script>

Check browser compatibility before using this. I haven't.

battel.net

[subtraho]

I can't count the times I've accidentally gone to http://www.battel.net/forums/warroom/ (instead of http://www.battle.net/forums/warroom/ )

.. well at least it's nothing unsavory, but it is kind of annoying.

askjeeze.com

[mebreathing]

I own

• askjevess.com
• askjeives.com
• askjieves.com
• askgeives.com
• askjeeze.com
• askjeveskids.com
• askreeve.com

and a few other misspellings of "askjeeves". I simply redirect to ask.com, but make 2 cents for each clickthru. :) Traffic is dropping, cause they're moving towards the much simpler "ask.com", but it's a nice source of no-work income.

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Re:askjeeze.com

[mebreathing]

I get domains for $15/year from pegasi.net, and make around $250/month on these.

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Misinformation on framed slashdot typo redirect

[TheLer]

Someone registered a slashdot typo (I forget exactly what it is, somehting like salshdot) but they registered it with NameZero, a company that will provide you with a free domain name and I think hosting but they have their little banner frame at the bottom of the screen. So someone actually intended to help you guys out I guess but a side effect of using the namzero name as a redirect is the banner at the bottom. Just thought you should know.

Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.

money.

[Signal 11]

Take money out of the equation. Make it unprofitable for people to lie and you'll have solved the central problem of capitalism in general... that is, money makes people dishonest.

Same goes for the 'net, either you take capitalism out of it, or you solve it. But you can't work around it.

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Re:money.

[Alan]

So how do you do this? 99.9% of this sort of thing is done because of banner ads. So how do we make banner ads unprofitable? They are an extension of the commercialization we see around us every day, completely focused on the chance that their product or service will be so ground into our brains because we've seen it all over that when we need new carpets, or brain surgery, we'll go to them.

Personally I hate ads. I see them everywhere and you really can't get away from them. Signposts, TV, hugeass tv screens situated alongside the road while you drive home from work.... they all suck.

Personally I don't see us getting rid of them until advertising itself is unprofitable, which means either there is a better way (direct marketing or mind control or something) or we enter some sort of star trek universe where there is no need for money, and therefor no need to make someone else use your service or product, and therefor no need to advertise.

Another solution would be to make typesquatters illegal, but that would mean something like giving the owner of a copyright the right to own the mis-spellings of their name/product as well, and from the PITA episode and similar ones, we all know how *that* goes.

Interesting though, people come up in arms where something like PITA is involved, but we go the opposite way for something like this.

Hotmail and Hotmale ain't the same thing

[Voltage_Gate]

Trust me, you'll puke on your keyboard.

you know...

[Wakko Warner]

you would have to be incredibly, unbelievably stupid to not only make the mistake of typoing slashdot.org, but then to write an email about the site without even checking to see if the URL in the "Location:" bar is correct. Would any of the morons who have done this please reply to this post? I wanna see what breed of dork it takes to fuck up this magnificently.

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:you know...

[jesser]

I find typing alt-D (or ctrl-L), slashdot.org, enter to be faster than picking up the mouse and clicking a link in favorites or on from my links bar / personal toolbar. I make typos occasionally, but most of the time I just get a 404 -- no big deal. Of course, I'm used to doing the typing, and I might be faster at using the mouse for this if I was used to using the mouse.

I use the links bar / personal toolbar for bookmarklets, and accesskeyed links on my start page for sites I visit frequently. I use favorites/bookmarks a a place to dump URLs that I might want to look at 6 months from now.

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Re:you know...

[Pope]

OK, in iCab i have to type sl then return to get slash! :)

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

If there was a model of the most vague story...

[AFCArchvile]

then this has to be it.

What's he referring to, sites like Slashgrits?

Deceptive site name?

[rackrent]

I teach a course on computers and writing, and I recently used these websites as examples of how anyone can make a website that seems honest and unbiased--even manipulating the name of the site to that end:

http://www.algore-2000.net

http://www.gwbush.com

http://www.bush-cheney.net

Essentially, it seems like the whole "I've got a good looking domain name" philosophy is easily obtained and used to manipulate uneducated computer/Web users (probably using WebTV).

So as long as there are suckers out there who view vitriolic/false websites as legitimate sources of information, there will be the capitalists ready to make use of them. Oh I almost forgot. IMHO. So there.

------------

Re:Deceptive site name?

[rackrent]

oops I meant

www.algore-2000.org

------------

Making 1st amendment go bye-bye

[gad_zuki!]

Domain names aren't necessarily trademarks, so that analog doesn't apply. What does bother me is that only high-profile deep-pocket sites like slashdot.org could get away with the arbitration necassary to get rid of "typo" sites. While a smaller site or a personal site has to deal with the normal act of mistyping and ending up somewhere else.

Let's not get into the mess that would happen if I run doglovers.com and some other dog lover couldn't get that domain so they made their own legitimate dog site called dogloverz.com. Or maybe he's busy working on his site and has only some opening HTML and a few test ads. I'd rather not have brat netizens calling "typo" site and demaning pulled domains. Outlawing typo sites would be a great way for losers like GW Bush and Jack T. Chick to get rid of parody sites named after them. Go ahead and try to define "typo" site.

Typo sites should be kept alive and well and if you feel they're using your content without permission (framings) that doesn't mean all typo domains should be abolished it means you have a problem with one specific webmaster who is actively trying to fool people.

As far as linking to the "real" site, thats just as much bullshit as the rest. That could fool the user into thinking that slashbot.org has an association with slashdot.org. You're better off without them, eventually they should realize that hey this isn't the place I wanted to go.

What you should be doing is less whining and more hustling, inform the ad providers and the company that they're advertising that you saw their ad in an unfair fashion and will think twice before shopping there and prefer the honest admanship (this isn't a word or is it?) of their competitors.

Then again I don't see most ads, click my homepage to get a small but effective ad blocking hosts file.

Oh boy

[Nullsmack]

Another thing that can be made Illegal by the peasents who don't understand these magical computers that us magicians can operate soo well.
(/sarcasm) (I used the parenthesis on purpose)

Sigh, Am I the only one who thinks that someone should "reinvent" the web? I mean, make a totally different client/server thing with something like HTML 1..
geez, there is so much corperate bullshit on the web now, and they have most of the world thinking web=The Internet..
Freenet is a nice idea, but what we need is a totally different idea of how to post information on the internet. Something like Mojonation, where ppl can elect to store some of the info for the network and everything is broken up into packets with a unique identifier.. Plus a DNS type service where everything can be given a readable name, prolly ran thru the same distributed, redundant method.. a Modified version of html (take some of the annoying things that make it less secure out.. like any onclose crap, or the ability to resize your browser).. and a local client program that acts like a http proxy to your browser but uses the transport of the main network.. maybe throw some network testing code to make sure 56k ppl don't try to serve 20 other ppl at the same time.

At the rate we're going, I'm going to Digitally(tm) Copyright(tm) My(tm) Name(tm), James (tm)(R)(C) Retroactively(tm).

-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?

What's really not fun...

[claeswi]

Looking for pr0n and finding nothing but patches/maps/mods, that drives me crazy every time!

ClaesWi

Wow...typosquatting...

[ocelotbob]

Sure, I think that typosquatting is sneaky, devious, etc, but the solution that the "big" players want, swiping any domain that's even close to theirs for free, is wrong. How many people dial wrong phone numbers, etc? Just about everybody, and you get over it rather quickly. It's not a big deal, you just need to double check the url you typed in before you hit the return key.