VeriSign Looks At Earning Money on Domain Typos

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday September 11, 2003 @02:48PM from the seemingly-good-ideas dept.

Harald Paulsen writes "In a recent article Computer Business Review uncovers how VeriSign Inc is testing a service that would return a webpage if a user mistypes an URL. Basically all nonexistant domain queries could return an IP address and if the user was trying to access a page with a webbrowser they could get redirected to a search-engine, or worse: a page asking them to buy a domain. This is most certainly breaking the DNS standard and could be compared to cybersquatting (Hey Ford, want to have a banner ad whenever someone mistypes Toyota?). This is interesting in relation to an earlier story about register.com and holding-pages."

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It's already big business by Superfreaker · 2003-09-11 15:07 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Well, maybe not BIG business, but I know of several people who make a good living from mistyped url's.

If site www.xyz.com has a $10 referral bonus, these people will buy www.xyx.com and do a redirect the poor-typing surfer to the correct wite with their affiliate code included.
I'm sure the /. editorial team alone has filled a few pockets of these people given their typing skillz.

Cool, eh?