Typosquatting

Typosquatting is a form of cybersquatting (a practice of registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else), and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typos made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. They are often used to link to scams or malware.

Examples

 * 1) The website goggle.com was founded in 2006, spammed the user with constant windows spamming links to porn and scams. The website was also related to the malware and rogue program SpySheriff as noted by the YouTube video called "Want to kill your PC? Go to goggle.com" made by DFMaster69 on April 5, 2009. As noted, it has been excluded by the Wayback Machine and as of today, goggle.com has turned from a malware site to a political site. It was also reported that the site was squatted, such as fake iPhone scams, etc.
 * 2) The website was a screamer webpage that can trick users who mistype the domain "agar.io". This showed Jeff The Killer while quickly exchanging between negative and normal colors at a ratio that causes seizures while playing the same screamer from the Scary Maze Game. When the user tries to close the page, a window appears with the text saying "U SCARED BRO LOL", which forces the user to use the Task Manager or press (ctrl+alt+del) to close the window. As of August 2015, the side was decommissioned, and ended up as another redirect botnet.
 * 3) The website was a screamer webpage that can trick users who mistype the domain "strawpoll.me". Until 2015, this showed Jeff The Killer while quickly exchanging between negative and normal colors at a ratio that causes seizures, In 2015, the website turned into a flashing picture of Amy from Fright Night accompanied by a loud screech, and stayed that way until it went defunct. There are also mirrors that the creator has hosted, including: "Strawpoli.me" and "Strawpoil.me". As of today, it ends up as another dead ww7. site and redirects with a "for sale" placeholder.

Why This Practice Sucks

 * 1) It's often used to troll people, at best. Sometimes it is done for satire, other times outright misleading.
 * 2) At worst it is a leading tool for phishing and other internet scams often based on email. They can duplicate the appearance of the cloned site, thus tricking people into giving up their personal information and/or login credentials.
 * 3) Because they are usually simple typos, people could unintentionally visit one of these sites if they commit the same typo.