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I mistyped a link. Fortunately I also borked markdown so I went back and double checked it.

The live site stackexcange dot com (intentional typo domain name) appears parked 100% of the time in Tor Browser. In Opera private, it redirects to random affiliate sites, some of which seem to be malware distributors purporting to be Microsoft or Adobe.
At the least they play obnoxious audio and try to get you to call a number while recording your location and presumably other info.

Is there anything that can be done about sites like this? More practically, could we at least make people aware if they type a link that is similar to stackexchange.com but with a typo?

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    "stackexcange" is this the typo or ?
    – HackerKarma
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 16:07
  • That's the bad site, yes. Since it sometimes is parked and sometimes is malicious, I wanted to preserve which of the potential typos it was.
    – Josiah
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 16:08
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    There's nothing illegal about typosquatting - it's kinda like that guy that plays bagpipes in the park outside your house, but he's smart enough to only do it during not-quiet times and he's two decibels below the legal limit. The solution to both of these is the same - dish out enough money to outright purchase the portion of the park (in this case the domain) that he likes to sit on. Parks, like these domain names, are not cheap.
    – Undo
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 17:18
  • That's what I suspected @Undo. And I suppose most people don't type URLs by hand anymore so it may be a minor issue. Thanks for the tag, I wasn't sure where to put this.
    – Josiah
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 17:20
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    @Undo I think some ways of typosquatting can be prosecuted under Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, though this is more of a topic for Law...
    – user259867
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 17:56
  • @NormalHuman I think you should make this an answer.
    – Josiah
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 14:28

1 Answer 1

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There is not much to do. We can't expect SE to purchase every domain that slightly looks like any Stack Exchange domain.

In some countries, there are laws that protect like malicious sites, but suing such sites is quite an expensive business.

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  • I guess what I was hoping for was a message if someone is manually typing a link and borked it - like a "Did you mean stackexchange.com?" But I agree, purchasing all those domains is impractical.
    – Josiah
    Commented May 25, 2016 at 12:29

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