Chilling reason why you should never mistype a website domain name
A seemingly innocent typo may cost you
One YouTuber shows what happens when you mistype a website.
Turns out, innocent typos can take you to some pretty sketchy places on the web.
It's called typosquatting and it's a trick where scammers buy misspelt versions of popular domain names and use them to redirect unsuspecting users to fake websites, scam pages or malware-infested sites.
A well-known example is 'Goggle.com' - a site that once tried to install fake antivirus software laced with malware on visitors' computers.
Advert
Sometimes, typosquatting sites are harmless, just pushing ads or random services.
Other times, they can steal personal data, bombard users with explicit content or infect your devices.
YouTuber Eric Parker explored how common typosquatting really is by intentionally misspelling website names and seeing where they led.
Some results were harmless like 'facebok.com' or 'fb.com' which luckily still redirect you to the official Meta Facebook.
Other ones like 'youtub.com' or 'palpay.com' landed him on domain parking websites which might not be so dangerous but surely aren't useful.
More scarily, when Parker searched 'sptify.com' - a pretty common typo for Spotify - he was redirected to a Binance cryptocurrency exchange website.
The crazy thing is the URL contained an affiliate link which means that someone would be earning a commission every time an unsuspecting user signed up and entered their financial details.
Furthermore, Parker discovered how Google Images is flooded with fake tech support scams, in particular, ones pretending to be Microsoft support.
If you're ever looking for tech support, make sure to always go to Microsoft's official website and don't trust any ones you search as the most dangerous can appear legitimate.
Another wild example was 'sykpe.com' (again, a pretty common misspelling of Skype). Instead of going to the real site, users were redirected to a sketchy web protection extension that claimed to block 'adult searches' and protect data.
The trick was it forced users to download an add-on before redirecting them to Skype, making it seem legit.
But once installed, it reportedly hijacked search results, redirecting users to even more malware-infested sites.
One user stated that after installing it, their searches for 'nintendo.com' kept getting rerouted to more scam pages.
Cybersecurity company Norton warns that typosquatting isn’t just annoying but it can be a serious security risk.
According to the company: "Typosquatting is when someone registers a domain name that is an intentionally misspelled version of another popular website.
"While many misspelled URLs won’t work or will redirect you, some of these fake websites that look real might be a source of malware, and visiting them could even lead to identity theft."