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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."
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The real problem is when an institution like Verisign does this kind of stuff. Many ISPs put some thing in their zones that shouldn't be there, the problem is when a root server does it.
ICANN Should put his pants on and take action.
ALMAFUERTE
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
It's a shame that the people who are probably more likely to mis-type a URL and not notice/tell the difference are probably beginner users of the internet. These people are also perhaps more likely to fall for scams such as downloading trojans etc. I work as an IT trainer teaching older people how to use computers, and many of them are unable to tell the difference between typing something into a search engine, and typing something into an address box. They are definately the people that don't know that mis-typing a URL actually makes much of a difference, and I have seen many of them attempt to install malware, just because the install box has popped up, and they have no idea what to do with it.
Is most of this really a scam though? It seems to me there are two levels to this type of behavior - the true scam, whereby a user is led to believe the site they are looking at really is the site they intended to go to, and therefore handing over personal details / card numbers etc.
However, most of what is described appears to be people capitalising on poor typing skills - a "lesser" scam if you will. I suspect the majority of these miss-spelt domain names don't claim to be the site you're looking for.
A scam is, after all, to defraud somebody. Mis-spelt domain names is akin to reading a map incorrectly, and ending up somewhere you didn't expect.
Of course, the fact that many of these sites will then go on to install malicious software etc, and that they generally intend to catch traffic from other sites probably works against this argument.
...many of them are unable to tell the difference between typing something into a search engine, and typing something into an address box.
Both boxes look pretty much the same.
What you're highlighting is the imlicit expectation among software designers that users will come to understand the how the Internet works. That is, that users will understand what a URL is, how DNS works, what a search engine is, and ehat happens when you enter a search phrase versus entering a URL.
Those are unwarranted expectations. An analogy would be cars designed on the assumption that drivers understand how internal combustion engines work. Few of us would be able to drive safely if that was a prerequisite.
The most effective way to protect users from crooks and abusers on the net is to design software that does the protecting and is not based on unreasonable assumptions about user knowledge.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Go4it. But remember, you're paying a fee each time someone dials. If you're successful you'll be broke.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
decent typists (like we should be) are looking at the screen while typing
But if the typo occurs in the last few characters of a URL, then even the best typist might not notice it before pressing Enter.
... it might not be a good idea to spew venom and arrogance from almost every sentence.
... only the types bearing strong resemblance to Jimmy Fallon's IT guy character from Saturday Night Live ...
However, if you're happy with things currently, go back to your pap-fed, TV-induced brain-numbing stupor, and smile at the nice pretty pictures, the short snappy soundbites, and cower in fear at the Fox news alerts, and feel free not to engage.
(The instructions are deliberately vague. A sort of aptitude test, if you will.)
After reading crap like that, I can't imagine any normal person joining this