What is typosquatting?

Typosquatting is registering a domain deliberately similar to a legitimate one — a common misspelling, a swapped TLD, a look-alike character — so that mistyped URLs or misread emails land on the attacker's site instead.

How do I check if someone is typosquatting my brand?

A typosquat checker generates the common variants of your domain (omissions, transpositions, TLD swaps, homoglyphs) and checks which ones are registered, so you can review them without generating every combination by hand.

What should I do if I find a typosquat domain?

Document what the site is doing (parked page, phishing, malware) before acting — that evidence matters for a UDRP complaint or a takedown request to the registrar or hosting provider, which are the usual next steps.

Typosquatting: How Domain Look-Alikes Are Used Against You

Typosquatting registers a domain close enough to a real one that a mistyped URL, a misread email, or a quick glance sends someone to the wrong site — one built to look exactly like the one they meant to visit.

What Typosquatting Is

A typosquatted domain is deliberately similar to a legitimate one, close enough that users land on it by mistake rather than by following a link. The registrant is betting purely on human error at the point of typing or reading a domain name.

Common Techniques

Technique	Example (for example.com)
Character omission	`exampl.com`
Character transposition	`examlpe.com`
Character repetition	`eexample.com`
TLD swap	`example.net, example.co`
Combosquatting	`example-support.com, example-login.com`
Homoglyphs	`exarnple.com (rn instead of m)`

What Attackers Use Them For

Phishing — a login page that looks identical to the real one, harvesting credentials
Business email compromise — sending invoices or payment requests from a look-alike domain that a distracted reader won't catch
Ad revenue and traffic hijacking — parking the domain with ads aimed at people who mistyped the real one
Malware distribution, or simply holding the domain to resell it back to the brand at a markup

How to Defend Against It

Monitor regularly for newly registered look-alike domains rather than checking once
Defensively register the handful of variants attackers use most (common misspellings, the obvious TLD swaps) rather than trying to cover every possible combination
Train staff to check the sender's actual domain on unexpected invoices or password-reset emails, not just the display name

Check for Look-Alike Domains

Run a typosquat check →Next: What is a DNSBL? →

Try it on your domain

See the theory in practice — run a Typosquat Checker for your own domain.