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Microsoft Tool To Help Users Avoid Typo Domains
blueZ3 writes "ZDnet is running a story on a new tool from Microsoft that aims to inform users when they reach 'typo domains'. Apparently, there's concern in Redmond that IE users are being exploited by companies running ad farms on typo domains. The tool uses an automated search routine to look for domains with particular types of typographical errors--transpositions, incorrect TLDs, missing letters--and then adds the domains to a database. The eventual goal (though this isn't clear from the article) seems to be something akin to Verisign's URL redirecting, where typo domains are blocked."
The article isn't entirely clear whether the app reports back to MS your web surfing locations. Granted, it could be useful to see what the user is commonly misspelling, but at the same time, I really have no interest in relinquishing this information.
Jim -- http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- A workout plan that doesn't feel like homework.
Anyone who does that job is most definitely a tool.
What if I really wanted to go to goggle.com? (don't, it tries to drive-by install something when you leave.)
"www.google.com"
Did you mean "search.msn.com"?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
This sounds like a great idea, but I can see some legitimate causes being harmed. For instance, Untied.com is a typo of United, which is used to protest some labor practices at United Airlines.
I guess the question is, how is MS going to determine the legitimate misspellings from the illegitimate misspellings? Certainly United doesn't like the misspelling above, but it's not anti-consumer like misspelling a company name and winding up at a spam site, or worse yet, a phishing site. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Is this a strategic swipe at Google's ad revenue for parked domains?
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
Verisign redirected you by DNS, this seems like more of a client side tool. I wouldn't have any problem with it if it was an optional Windows setting or uninstall tool.
Ending up at a link farm isn't any fun, but at least it's not dangerous. But you're told to type URLs from email rather than copy-and-paste, and then you risk being screwed by your own typo. Even going to your own bank is risky if you type without consciously typo-checking the URL.
I thought for sure that there would be enough Subscribers send email to the DaddyPants address that this one would be yanked.
Well, for reference, here are all the +4 and +5 comments from last week's installment of this story, so you karma whores can repost them and hope the moderators don't see through your ruse...
Microsoft 'URL Tracer' Hunts Typosquatters
Meanwhile, you can blame me for jinxing it.
Ghost Article: M'soft Tool To Help Users Avoid Typo Domains
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Apparently, there's concern in Redmond that IE users are being exploited by companies running ad farms on typo domains.
How dare those other companies! Nobody's allowed to exploit Microsoft's users except Microsoft!
I have relatives that are not computer literate. But when they visit a website by typing in its URL and they see a site that isn't what they were expecting, they know to check the spelling of the URL. As far as they are concerned, it's like dialing a wrong phone number.
It seems to me that Microsoft is wasting resources on something that isn't really necessary.
oh, he said something about linux, I wonder what's that? Let me try and check this (types linux.com in browser). Hmm it's just some typo, maybe I haven't heard him clearly, oh well...
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Stupid parents to have their son's name collide with phonetics of Microsoft.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
It may not look like it, but this is a strategic move against Google.
Google makes a significant amount of money of bulk domainers. Domainers are people who buy domains in bulk, expecting to make revenue off inexperienced users tying words directly into the URL bar, variations/misspellings on popular domain names etc). An example is something like http://www.bloggerforums.com/.
By making users aware of what's going on, they'll be more likely to fix the problem themself (instead of clicking one of the sponsored links by Google), thus cutting a part of the revenue stream. (How big? Well, Google obviously isn't going to say, but it's estimated to be way into the hundred of millions.)
There is a much easier way to block 99% of the typosquatters - they have a very small number of IP addresses they park their domains on.
Block those IP addresses, block the squatters.
Check it out for yourself - fire up your favorite DNS query tool, and plug in some typos.
www.eFax.com are spammers
will typing pron.com send me to porn.com? or vice-versa?
Tom
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
Microsoft domain corrector has detected that you may have mis-typed your desination address.
You were trying to access, "whitehouse.gov".
Did you really mean, "whitehouse.com"?
I really hate domain squatters. It's not just typos, but just cool domains that could be used for a legitimate site are just ads. IE the.com, yeah.com, sloths.com... Actually one time I was snooping around the directories of sloths.com looking for contact info to see if I could buy the domain when I came across a sql.txt file that told me their passwords.
I've emailed Google several times about this awful program. I hate all forms of advertising, but it just makes me mad to see cool domains used for illegitimate purposes. People say it's just another business, but they are stupid.
really 867993
Karma schkarma
Hi there, I noticed you are about to visit a TLD web-site.
The address www.apple.com/macosx appears to be a misspelling of the address of a legitimate site http://www.microsoft.com/Genuine/.
Sites that use spelling variations of legitimate sites and companies may be used in "phishing" schemes to trick users into revealing their access accounts, credit card data, and other personal information.
If Microsoft would open the protocol and/or the database there could be a way to implement this in other browsers too. Perhaps a web service. If they really think this is that big of a problem then a free service would convince me they're serious.
This problem exists because users seem to place an unhealthy emphasis on a DNS domain name as a web topic. Perhaps we should be looking at ways of de-emphasizing a DNS domain name's importance in identifying content and start looking for ways to let users find specific pieces of information in a reliable manner using some other tool (such as an X.500 or LDAP directory of official organization names, registered trade marks, service marks, etc.).
.com to their search term and get "official" content, this will remain a problem. Determining what domain names are squatters and what domains aren't is fairly easy today, but it will only be a matter of time (and a brief amount of time at that) before these typosquatters just dress their pages up to look a little more substantial and your horribly subjective test will start to fail.
Until users stop thinking that they can just add a
I cannot remember all the times when I made a mistake and went to one of those "search" index sites because I know they will hose up your IE. I panic and just shut off IE as hastily is I can. I know a spyware-hosting site when I see one. I still panic when it happens to me when on Linux using FF or Konquorer. I don't use IE, not just because I don't use Windows, but because it gets pwnd all the time.
This along with the phishing filter will hopefully solve alot of web crime and issues like that.
"Oh boy"
That's what VMWare is for!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
MikeRoweSoft.com
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
a man and ET? ET phones home.. ;-) As I'm sure IE does :-( As for finding what misspelled domains are most common, you could do that with a little DNS cache snooping. I'm sure the typo squatters have been doing it for ages.
Aside from phishing attempts, which is a legitimate concern (but imo should be addressed by the company that is getting spoofed), what is the big deal about typo squatting?
I enter in a lot of my URLs by hand. I frequently make typos because I was typing them too fast. I see a page that isn't what I was expecting or that is obviously a link farm, I just re-type the URL.
Or I use bookmarks. Or I use Google.
did you mean Internet Explorer?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Let's say you want to go to www.omgponies.com and typo it as omg!ponies!.com. Where do you end up going, and do you really deserve to be there?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Well, I'm for anything that will stick it to site-squatting parasites. I had to go with my second choice when naming my game suite because a link-farm scum was sitting on the domain I wanted.
;)
Mind you though, there's a pretty big potential for abuse. What will the protection fees be against ending up on this list?
Seems like win-win from Microsoft's POV though.
Yes. Last night my girlfriend was looking at booking hotels in Italy - she's a barrister, so definitely not short of intelligence.
She repeatedly mistyped domains and then totally failed to recognize that she was on a spam ad-farm site - my mother does the same. So does my housemate... People seem to really not notice this kind of thing in the slightest. It's the old 'I don't understand computers therefore I'll play dumb' routine.
We think you are trying to type in 'www.microsoft.com', please wait while we take you there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Apparently, there's concern in Redmond that IE users are being exploited by companies running ad farms on typo domains."
It occurs to me that the only people dumb enough to use MSIE these days are precisely those sorts of users who would be susceptible to the advertising on linkfarms.
I'm not sure whether to praise Microsoft for trying to protect the retards from themselves, or to curse them for defeating the net's version of Darwinian selection...
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
the solution is going to be worse than the problem. If I make a typo and go to the wrong site, big deal, it takes 5 seconds to correct it. Now I'm going to be nagged all all the time, well i would be nagged if used microsoft or explorer. Sounds like clippy is expanding his empire of annoyance.
I'm betting that, despite this being an "optional" tool and users' voluntarily installing it, Microsoft will be sued by several companies who protest that their domains are legitimate despite appearing to be misspellings of other, more popular domains. And they have a point, too.
Any typo that starts with "m" will obviously point to www.microsoft.com. And also any typo that starts with "n" too because it looks like "m".
Do not mark in this space. For official office use only.
If you type in www.Knopper.Net, you go to www.Windows.com right?
Nothing is going to change until we shoot the bastards.
Andy Out!
...really want to go to whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov? ;-)
if (!sig) { printf("Signature Unavailable\n"); }
The internet is fine. It is the OS that sux. People go after it because it is an easy target.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's good to know Microsoft is working on products like this. Really. I mean, instead of getting Vista back on schedule, they want to release things like this. Or spend money on their People Software ads.
It's sad. I think this is a Titanic starting to sink.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Why would you use a program called MS Tool? anyway, isn't that name a bit.. redundant?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Or else the application would be called gsetup_beta.exe
The ______ Agenda
I think a lot of people are looking at this the wrong way. It seems to be optional. I know many people run ad-blocking software with their browsers due to all the obnoxious banner ads and flash ads floating about the net these days. Many of these people use filter sets that are provided by someone else. This could work quite well if Microsoft allowed the users to have custom filter sets and was easily turned off. If implemented the wrong way, yes it could be ridiculously obnoxious. At the same time if implemented properly it could be a nice feature. Worst case other web development teams can steal the idea and implemented it well if Microsoft doesn't.
User: Control-L www.linux.org Enter
IE: This is a typo-squatting domain. You really meant to go to www.microsoft.com
Seriously: for software to try to determine whether two service names are confusingly similar is a really bad idea; this area is regulated by trademark law and the courts are responsible for enforcing it. What software can do is help trademark owners identify potentially confusingly similar domain names prior to going to court.
Actually the spybouncer page is called from:
hxxp://lsjmp.com/12/135.htm?r=135&u=519
which is in turn called from:
hxxp://www.goggle.com/
Put "spybouncer" and "lsjmp" in your ad filters to stop this (I added them to my Proxomitron filter set).
Visceral Psyche Films
"there's concern in Redmond that IE users are being exploited by companies running ad farms on typo domains"
You mean like typing HTTP://HTTP:// and getting redirected to WWW.MICROSOFT.COM
davecb5620@gmail.com
Didn't that company -- the one that comes up first in the results -- invent http? And/or didn't they purchase it? embrace it? extend it? etc.?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I thought he'd say something along the lines of "I'm going to fucking bury that URL, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill typos"
Have you metaroderated recently?
It was all non-existent
http://www.untied.com/ - which is just a merciless basher site of United Airlines (i.e. http://www.united.com/
It's sad and hilarious - United Airlines completely sucks
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Install Firefox and use WindizUpdate next time. No need to use IE for anything except browser compatibility checking now.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs