Typosquatting is when a cybercriminal creates a website with a name or address similar to a popular and honest website. For example you’re looking for www.macys.com. But you may be a bad speller or simply mis-type the address. And you land on something like www.maceys.com or www.nacys.com. A mistake any of us could make. The cybercriminal is waiting for you when you arrive and you could end up looking at a lot of spam advertisements or getting hit with a drive-by download of some malware. (See drive-by download in Terminology) This situation happens everyday and is a real problem for both legitimate websites and innocent consumers.
Some websites are complete impostors. They look every bit like the real website but they aren’t. You think you’re on the Bank of America website when in actually you’re in a cybercriminal’s trap at www.bancofamerica.ru. These sites may ask you to log in or verify with a credit card number. This is called as phishing. Once you enter that information you could be in real trouble.
Pay close attention when typing in URL’s. That’s a web address. Look carefully at it before you hit the enter button. Check it again after it appears on your screen. Be careful.
Now you know.