Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Typosquatting heavily used also in Belgium and the Netherlands...

Typosquatting is a form of Internet cybersquatting, based on the probability that a certain number of Internet users will mistype the name of a Web site (or actually its URL) when surfing the Web. Typically, a typosquatter will register several possible input errors for a "brand name" Web site known for its high traffic, and then monitor to see how many clicks a day each of their "typo" domain names receives, and use the information to sell advertising for the sites that receive a high volume of accidental traffic. Advertising revenue might come from selling ads to the original site's competitors or by providing redirect pages to related products or services. I have found several sites in Belgium and the Netherlands which have nearly the same name as some known ones even like the company I work for: NOXS ... You can find the official site www.noxs.com and it looks that we got a 'typosquatter' at www.noxs.org ... At least my www.wavci.com site seems not so popular yet! ;-)