Typos and URLs make a terrible combination, according to a report released Monday by security company McAfee.
Web surfers have a 1-in-14 chance of landing on a typo-squatting site, due to mistyping the URL of a popular site, according to the report called "What's In A Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007."
Landing on such a site, in turn, can ultimately lead receiving more spam, once one's e-mail is harvested from the typo-squatting site. In a majority of the cases, however, typo squatters are looking to generate money via pay-per-click ads on their domains, according to the report.
McAfee, which examined 1.9 million variations of 2,771 popular domain names, found that game sites had the greatest likelihood of being squatted at 14 percent, followed by airline sites at 11.4 percent, and mainstream media sites at 10.8 percent. Dating sites, at 10.2 percent, and technology-Web 2.0 sites, at 9.6 percent, were fourth and fifth. Children's site are also highly targeted by typo squatters.
It may be time to rein in those dancing digits.
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