405 days ago
Typosquatting sites fined

Two fake websites claiming to be Wikipedia and Twitter have been removed from the Internet and fined £100,000 each.

This trend is coming from a relatively unknown category of site who use “typosquatting” to capitalize on typos — they buy domain names similar to those used by highly trafficked websites, and are most often missing a letter or have frequently used misspellings of popular sites.

Typosquatting websites such as ‘Wikapedia’ and ‘Twtter’ appearing on the internet to trick innocent web users into clicking on fraudulent ads that announce that the user has won a prize. In the case of these two sites, to receive the prize, for example, an iPad, people were asked to submit their mobile phone number. The site then sent a text with a pin number and more texts with survey questions. Every time the user responded to the survey questions via texts he or she was charged £1.50.

The UK watchdog body responsible for regulating premium rate telephone services, PhonepayPlus, who kicked ‘Wikapedia’ and ‘Twtter’ from the internet wrote in a statement:

“In both cases, the landing pages for the ‘squatted’ sites looked like the genuine sites the consumer was searching for – the ‘squatted’ sites used the same logos, colouring and fonts.
“These ‘squatted’ sites informed consumers that they had won or could claim a prize, such as an iPad. In both cases, consumers were given the impression that to enter or claim they simply had to enter their contact details and answer some questions.”

The companies, Unavalley BV and  Amsterdam-based R&D Media Europe were fined for the Twtter and Wikapedia sites, and were also ordered to repay those who were charged for answering the survey questions, since pricing was not clearly stated on the prize ads.