Slashdot Mirror
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."
Interested in joining an anonymous, underground internet?
http://meta.fshell.org/
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I see no problem. :)
Slashdit
What you need, when you need it
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
As are 75% of all hand-entered /. submissions.
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.
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.
I recall once typing in slashdot.org, (incorrectly) and ended up at a site displaying nice frequency/time graphs of how often that occured. (A lot)
I wish I could remember what it was - I think salshdot.org - (now just a black page with an automatic redirect)
One of those milk through the nose moments.
And put an extra 'o' in:
www.gooogle.com - same result
It's hard typing correctly all the time with only one hand free. ;)
This goes way beyond typos. There is a whole cottage industry of people registering domain names that unwary site owners allow to expire. I've heard several stories of church groups who accidentally let their domain expire and within a matter of days it had teen porn on it.
I'm a big tall mofo.
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.
Is there a plug-in to have whatever you type spellchecked or suggested, something like Google Suggest.
I work for a company that exploits mistyped URLs.
From our business, we found that a dial up user does an average of 4 bad requests a month and a broadband user an average of 10.
Iraq: war to save the U
www.whitehouse.gov: Current President's home www.whitehouse.com: Former President Clinton's home ;)
"Nature bats last..."
Mine is localhost.com
Those guys must be making a killing from people hitting ctrl-enter by mistake.
Chip H.
slsahdot.org
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.
Google have prevention for this type of thing on their site by registering multiple domains.
http://www.gooogle.com/
http://www.googlee.com/
http://www.googlle.com/
Word!
Have you metaroderated recently?
If you follow http://www.slahsdot.org/ it's almost the same site but there's "wrestling women" as the most popular link. Does that mean slash dotters have this affinity for buff chicks? We need a psychologist in here...
Hunt and peck.
Use proper form but look at the keys
Don't look at the keys
Speech recognitin softwar wurks fur we
I don't have hands you insensitive clod!!
I dictate everthing to CowboyNeal
Right now, I've got a broken arm, so everything is one handed. Normally, though, I look at the keys.
Great... now let's watch it go down in flames.
:)
I have a feeling they should switch to a bigger scale on those graphs.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
...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"
Wow, 20%, huh?
People really have to stop typing with one hand.
does this. He owns easily over a few thousand miss-spells, and offers services to buy up expired domains. There's really 2 tricks to this service.
The first is to have a program to find domains that expire, and find them the day of expiry so you can pick them up before others trying to do the same. Of course, some domains will do better (ie. miss-spell of slashdot) than others (ie. miss-spell of some joe-blow site).
The second is to target the material on it to the types of visitors it would get. Of course, with the new domain ad pages from google, it makes this really easy. This is a huge business, honestly, you have no idea how many people, when they get to the wrong page, go through and click on an advertisement.
So how well does this do? He makes 6 figures canadian a year on it, and that's not including business derived from his own programs to find expired domains. Furthermore, he's my age (22) and still in university. How can you argue with something that brings that type of money for doing so little work?
AT&T had a national collect-calling campaign telling people to "Dial 1-800-Operator."
A competitor, MCI IIRC, quickly snatched up the number 1-800-Operater and got lots of the business from the campaign.
So it's not just URL's that get the typo business.
This is how I found out about slashdong.org
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
That would make me the grandparent, for a website that I typed by accident, 35 hits or so a day is 'a lot' in my little tiny world opinion :-)
Actually, you are totally right, I did try to research prior to posting, but couldn't remember the link, so I more or less tried to make it sound 'bigger' than it really was. I think I lied.
Apologies.
I wonder if you could make any money doing something like this over the telephone. It would work like this. Register an 800 number very similar to some other high traffic number, like one belonging to Visa, Or some other frequently called company, and play an advertisement everytime someone calls. It's much easier to mistype a phone number as many phones don't allow you to see what numbers you actually typed, or dialed in.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Oh and we work at the DNS level with DNS NXDOMAIN anwsers.
That means that these figures I gave in the parent post DO NOT include mistyped URLs going to a registered domain (ie www.gooogle.com which is a domain that does exist) and all the errors caught by msn.com under Internet Explorer and google.com under Firefox.
Also, we only care about HTTP traffic.
That explains maybe the difference between our numbers and the 10% to 20% the studies found...
Iraq: war to save the U
A lot of times I end up at slutdot.org, but it's not becuase I don't know how to type.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I also had the same idea about the same site. I thought it would be funny to see what was there. Now I am emotionally scarred and, since I'm a Californian, I'm thinking about suing.
Honk if you're horny.
...The Typo Milionaires? ;-)
I posted a story on AQFL about it:
"Former U.S. President candidates' Web sites can be just another place to shop for sex toys, download movies and get a law degree online in a few months...
When politicians and Internet domain names meet, strange things happen, particularly after the campaigns are over. Click on Elizabeth Dole's old site, and you go straight to an auction of Pokemon video games on eBay. A Libertarian currently owns the original 1996 Clinton and Dole campaign Web sites, and uses them to support 2004 Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, while also hawking Clinton and Dole's latest books.
When asked for an explanation, a top domain-name registrar pointed out that Web site addresses are always rented and never owned, and that former owners can't dictate who picks up their discarded sites."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
... 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
1-800 h0liday (with a zero) was snatched up by a travel agency, who then booked commisionable stays at holiday inns--
holiday inn sued and lost
the agency never advertised as "1-800-h0liday" they just happened to have this certain # with a zero in it.-so it was not infringing on a trademark... kinda harder to do with URLS..
more of the same here
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/1800.html
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I used to own yahhoo.com for a while. The domain was getting massive amount of unique traffic. I believe it was something like 2000 uniques per day. Then I got curious and set a catch-all email address. That got really interesting real fast...
But I gave it up because it didn't feel right. Could have linked it to one of those search engine sites to make some decent change though... Oh well...
eTrade SUCKS
Just set up a VPN server on your computer, then get your friends to set up a VPN connection on their machines to your IP. Only allow access to trusted clients.
Make sure you dial Ess-Oh-Ess NOT Ess-Zero-Ess. One is (or rather was) Apple's help line, the other was a phone sex line. Back in the bad old days I worked at Best Buy and routinely had to deal with customers complaining that we had told them to call a phone sex number.
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Yes, but that are all point to point connections. I have got that set up already with my friends. Problem is that you won't get any routing, and you must trust each friend. It's a pain on your firewall and sockets setup as well.
What I need - and I think more people are interested in this - is something that established a virtual LAN. Now, VLAN is already another technology, so we might need another acronym. I would consider Open Virtual Private Lan, or OpenVPL for short (see below).
The biggest issues are probably the routing - e.g. broadcast packages - and management. You would also want to set it up as a LAN adapter as well (which requires insight in device driver development). You would probably want to start off with something like OpenVPN and add routing and management on top of it.
As you can see, I did a little thinking beforehand. Currently my private developments are all in Java unfortunately, so programming the TCP/IP stack in Linux is a bit too remote for me. This IS an interesting idea though, most of you will probably agree.