Sophos: 80% of Mistyped URLs Lead to Typosquatting Sites
Sophos has announced that it is cautioning computer users to be careful while typing the URLs, following the results of a Sophos study into the scale of 'Typosquatting'.
Typosquatters register misspellings of popular websites in the hope that they will be able to make money out of traffic from unintentional typing mistakes made by internet surfers. Sophos looked at typosquatting targeting its own website and those of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple. The study looked for registered websites for every single one letter typo of the company name: one letter omitted (eg. Sopos), one letter mistyped (eg. Sphos), or one letter added (Ssophos).
The study revealed that there is a significant typosquatting ecosystem around high-profile, often-typed domain names. A huge 86% of the possible one letter misspellings of the Apple homepage led to typosquatting sites.
Graham Cluley, Sr. Technology Consultant, Sophos said, "It's so easy to mistype a URL, and it's inevitable that from time to time you will end up on an unintended website. In the worst cases, careless typing can lead you to a criminal website designed to steal your identity or phish your credentials. A good idea is to bookmark your favorite websites rather than rely upon your fingers working correctly."
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