What's typosquatting?

I'm not surprised you don't know what it means - as far as I can tell, it entered the common lexicon just a few days ago. Surprisingly, it doesn't have anything to do with weightlifting while copyediting manuscripts, either.

In fact, typosquatting is a variation on domain squatting, which is when unscrupulous folk buy up domains with the express purpose of selling them to someone else for a hefty markup. For example, if you were to announce that you were selling a new product called Ptoi Tobacco, before the day was out someone else would inevitably register all obvious domain names associated with your product name. Then you'd be stuck having to negotiate with them or pursuing a trademark violation suit with WIPO or similar.

Typosquatting is a subtle variation: it's registering domain names that are typographical mistakes on popular and common domains. For example, you might try to get to eBay.com and accidentally type in beay.com, ebey.com or ebbay.com, all three of which are capitalizing on a registered trademark site without permission.

I have deliberately not made those domains clickable. They all appear safe, but often these type of domains are spyware/adware installer sites and should be left as soon as you realize you've made a mistake!

The reason typosquatting has come into the news is because Google just won a suit against Sergey Gridasov of St. Petersburg, Russia, owner of the domains googkle.com, ghoogle.com and gooigle.com. Google has been awarded ownership of the domain names. (here's a background story from WIRED)

In case you think this is all benign domain name games, by the way, here's a pithy quote from the WIRED story: "In a decision made earlier this week, arbitrator Paul A. Dorf, endorsed Google's contention that the misspelled addresses were part of a sinister plot to infect computers with programs -- known as "malware" -- that can lead to recurring system crashes, wipe out valuable data or provide a window into highly sensitive information."

So be careful out there!