Look out Microsoft for Yahoo TypoSquatters

First, Microsoft showed an interest in buying Claria which has long been accused of spyware practices.  They quickly back peddled due to the public outcry. Now there are serious “rumors” that Microsoft is interested in purchasing at stake in Yahoo.  I hope for Microsoft’s sake these are just rumors because some of Yahoo’s dirty deeds are being exposed.

Yahoo is accused of selling ad clicks and then making them available to spyware vendors to promote. They’ve also been accused of selling space on sites know as “typosquatters”.

ReveNews reports: “Yahoo Charged with Syndication Fraud”
Washington Post reports “Suit Levels Spyware, Typosquatting Allegations at Yahoo”

A typosquatter is someone registers a domain similar to popular websites and then takes advantage of the traffic sometimes fooling users into thinking they’ve reached their correct destination.  When it only costs about $20 to register a domain for a couple years it’s common for typosquatters to register hundreds of sites and prey on typo’s.

I found if you added an extra “r” to www.nickjr.com your kids would be in real trouble.
Four separate windows open including the game below.  The first time one of the windows was an ad for Orbitz.  The next time I got an add for InfoWorld magazine who ironically is also reporting today on this topic.  Click here.

According to SiteAdvisor after playing this game
they received 81 spam Emails a day.

If you type M instead of the N in netscape.com you’ll get a site which claims to be Netscape.com but has links to x rated videos.

Leave off the last “d” in www.disneyland.com and Register.com tries to download the AvantBrowser and ads popped up and under for Monster.com and American Express.

I don’t recommend trying to put in your own typos to see what you get.
For more information on TypoSquatters.  Check out http://research.microsoft.com/Typo-Patrol/