The Typo Millionaires

theodp writes "Slate's Paul Boutin reports on the sordid history of the oldest scam on the Internet. For almost as long as the Web has existed, there's been a thriving economy of sites, services, and software vying to grab you as soon as your mistype a URL. Studies estimate that 10-20% of all hand-entered URLs are mistyped, adding up to at least 20 million wrong numbers per day, helping to enrich the likes of porn purveyors, ISP's, Paxfire, Microsoft and VeriSign."

Comments

10-20% of all hand-entered URLs are mistyped

[Anonymous Coward]

As are 75% of all hand-entered /. submissions.

Re:10-20% of all hand-entered URLs are mistyped

[darkov]

As are 100% of /. comments.

not new

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the time several years back when I read about people registering misspelled web addresses. So I thought I'd take a look, and tried the first spelling mistake I thought of, www.hotmale.com.

I've been very careful since about what I type.

It's true.

[tektek]

It's hard typing correctly all the time with only one hand free. ;)

Zappos

[strider44]

Shoe shoppers who mistype www.zappos.com as wwwzappos.com get pictures of women who are wearing shoes but not much else.

Unfortunately, though Slate's servers are well hardened against DOS attacks such as what slashdot inflicts, since every slashdotter who will read that quote will instantly type in wwwzappos.com into his URL bar, the servers of that site will fall under the weight of the 80% of slashdotters who get that URL correct.

Re:Not just typos...

[darkov]

Really? I just though it was where you went for teen porn. Do you think I attended a Christian youth group for the singing and praying?

Re:An anonymous, underground internet?

[vally_the_poo]

George W. Bush was right finally: there are internets !! Woaw, that will change my all life man !

Hotmail vs. Hotmale

[iXiXi]

This isn't a fat finger mistake but a funny story. This lady that I worked with was Internet illiterate. She wanted to set up an e-mail address so she could send junk home that was personal in nature. She had trouble with her ISP e-mail and no one at work wanted to volunteer to intercede and help out. I told here to just go to hotmail.com and set up an account for free. She went to hotmale.com and started screaming !! She thought she would be fired on the spot...I had to get the President, John, to help calm her down...hell she was almost 66 years old. Never saw anything like that I guess. /snicker

Re:I wonder

[aduzik]

JERRY: Well wait a second, don't you see that's 555-FILK.
KRAMER: What's Filk?
JERRY: Filk's nothing, but 555-FILM is Movie Phone.
KRAMER: Oh Movie Phone.
JERRY: Yes, so people are just dialing it by mistake and getting you.
KRAMER: So, I'm Filk?
JERRY: You're Filk.
KRAMER: Oh, Mama.