14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is finally making a move trying to get a hold of the twiter.com a domain name very similar to its own twitter.com but filled with scammy-looking offers.
The company has filed a dispute with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), trying to take over the domain to stop it from tricking its potential visitors.
Twiter.com appears to have been registered in 2004, a full two years before Twitter launched and before twitter.com was registered. It's clear then that the owner did not intend to make a quick buck off of Twitter with the domain.
But it doesn't seem like anyone used the domain for an actual site either, it was a parked domain from the start of its existence and filled with ads, bringing its owner a small but steady revenue stream. The first record of it on the Internet Archive is from 2003.
After Twitter started becoming popular, the similarity in name proved to be a blessing, since traffic to the site increased significantly.
Last year, in August, it reached 125,000 unique visitors, according to Compete data, though the figure went down after this to several thousand visitors per month.
Now, it redirects to an offers site with a very similar design to Twitter.com which tries to get users to complete surveys in exchange for a 'chance' to win several Apple products.
There's good money to be made from owning a domain similar to the one of a popular site or company, especially when considering the very low barrier of entry.
Typosquatters and cybersquatters rely on people making typos or not knowing the exact domain name of the site they're trying to reach and take advantage of this, usually by filling their sites with ads but sometimes doing more nefarious things like phishing attempts or trying to spread mallware.
