What is typosquatting?
Typosquatting is registering a near-match of a brand's domain or handle — a transposed letter, a missing character, a swapped top-level domain — to catch people who mistype the real one.
It is a subset of cybersquatting distinguished by its method: it does not rely on anyone searching for the name, only on them getting it slightly wrong.
The common uses are phishing and credential harvesting, because a near-match domain makes a convincing sender address and a convincing login page. That makes the exposure a security problem rather than only a brand one.
Defensive registration is the usual answer for the highest-risk variants, on the basis that holding a name costs far less than contesting it later.
Related terms
- CybersquattingCybersquatting is registering a domain name that trades on someone else's brand in bad faith, usually to resell it at a markup or to intercept traffic intended for the brand.
- Brand impersonationBrand impersonation is the use of a brand's name, logo or imagery on an account, page or profile that the brand does not own, in a way that presents it as official or affiliated.
- UDRPThe UDRP is the arbitration procedure for recovering a domain name registered in bad faith against a trade mark, run through approved providers such as WIPO rather than through a court.