Beware of Domain-squatters

Please take care when you type internet domain names, whether into an address box or at the command line!

Domain-squatters are people who register internet domain names which are very similar to other “real” names.  They do this in the hope of attracting mis-directed traffic, generally either for advertising purposes or so that they can steal credentials for later use.  For example, c.uk is registered to “a non-UK Corporation”, and if you mis-type www.inf.ed.ac.uk as www.inf.eda.c.uk you will be taken to a completely different site altogether.  Roughly half of the possible single-letter .uk domains are registered, as are many two-letter permutations and truncations.

Within Informatics we attempt to block these, by having our own nameservers redirect to the bit-bucket. Many large corporations also register common typos of their own names: for example gooogle.com will redirect to google.com.

Elsewhere though, it’s down to care and vigilance. Don’t just click through unexpected responses. Take a second look to see what’s really going on. And if in doubt, ask.

You can find some guidance on data security on our computing.help pages.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply