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Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typo errors made by users while typing a website or URL name. If a user accidentally enters an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter.

McAfee released a research report on this “What’s In A Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007″ which says about how a typo sqatterer registers domains using common misspellings of popular brands, products and people in order to redirect consumers to alternative Web sites.

The report gives the example of iPhone mania as a recent example of typo-squatting saying that even though Apple’s new phone appeared on the market just a few months ago, its likely that atleast 8,000 URLs using the word “iPhone” by the end of this year will be available. Some will be fan sites or rumor sites, while others will be run by hackers and scammers. The only common thing among these sites is that they have no affiliation with Apple.

McAfee’s Key findings include:

• A consumer who misspells a popular wesite URL has a 1 in 14 chance of landing at a typo-squatter site.
• The heavily targetted sites are that of Children’s. The typo-squatters take advantage of typing errors to expose children to pornography. In fact, 2.4 percent, or more than 46,000 of the typo-squatter sites tested, include some adult content.
• Automated ad syndication services enable many typo-squatter sites to make money; In fact one popular search engine’s ads show up on 19.3% of all suspected typo-squatter sites in this study and another search engine shows up on 4.4% of all suspected typo-squatter sites
• The five non-U.S. countries most likely to have popular sites squatted are: the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy.
• The five non-U.S. countries least likely are: the Netherlands, Israel, Denmark, Brazil and Finland

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