14 DAY TRIAL // Typo-squatting has always been very dangerous for everyone on the web but nowadays it tends to become very popular as they target more and more famous domains. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, typo-squatting refers to a domain similar to a well-known one which attempts to attract the visitors that misspell the URL link. This can be easily done by changing/removing/adding one letter of the URL so that some of the users who type a different address than the genuine one will get on their website. This action wouldn't be so dangerous but some of the websites are now targeting children pages, redirecting the users to pornographic material. According to security vendor McAfee, "the incidence of pornographic content on non-adult typo-squatted sites is just 2.4%, suggesting improvement since previous studies by other researchers."
McAfee conducted a research to find out which websites are squatted the most, revealing that the "game websites (14.0%), airlines (11.4%), main stream media company sites (10.8%), adult sites (10.2%) and technology and Web 2.0 related sites (9.6%)," are the ones targeted by this malicious action.
But I think nobody agrees that such an attempt should take kids from children content to pornographic content.
"Children's sites are highly targeted by typo squatters. The average for the category is 8.4% and 24 of the top most squatted sites are children's properties for kids 12 and under. Add in sites like MySpace and Miniclip and more than 60 of the top most squatted sites are properties that appeal to the 18 and under demographic."
And McAfee even provides us some examples. An Indian website addressed to children was squatted and now the same URL, without an "a" take visitors to an adult page offering pornographic videos and webcams.
For the full report released by the security vendor, check out this article.