Report Claims Google Profits from Typo-Squatting

We discussed cybersquatting the other night, the registration of domain names to cash in on hits to mistyped and misnamed URLs. It always seems like creeps are doing this sort of thing, but Google?

Typo-squatting has been around since the beginning of the web, but until recently, typo-squatters had limited means of profiting from surfers’ bad spelling or clumsy typing. But using Google’s Adsense for Domains (AFD) program, typo-squatters fill their sites with sponsored links that often point to the legitimate domain. If a misdirected surfer hits a sponsored link, the legitimate domain owner ends up paying the typo-squatter for that referral, and Google as well.

The typo-squatter Bankofdamerica.com, for example, has a sponsored link to the real Bank of America website. Typo-squatting, Edelman says, is illegal. “There sure are a lot of these sites, in the millions,” Edelman said. “The overall majority show Google ads.”

Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School and an advisor to McAfee, says there are as many as 80,000 domains “typo-squatting” on the United States’ top 2,000 websites alone, including MySpace, FaceBook and Craigslist. Edelman’s report, published in the McAfee Security Journal, shows that there are as many as 251 typo-squatted domains associated with Bank of America alone, and there are as many as 327 typo-squatted domains feeding off the cartoonnetwork.com site.

The law simply says, “do not typo-squat. Do not register, traffic in or use infringing domain names or confusingly similar names of trademarks,” Edelman says, referring to the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999.

Notice the bit about typo-squatters sitting on domains that look like the cartoonnetwork.com web site. Your kids are even being targeted.

Target to Pay $3 Million in Civil Case

Remember when we talked in class the other night about how defamation of character laws apply to the internet? To wit:

In February 2006, Cantrell was a customer at Target’s locations on Woodruff Road and Wade Hampton Boulevard and was questioned at each location by employees when she tried to pay for merchandise with a $100 bill, which was rejected because it was a 1974 series bill, the complaint alleges.

A loss-prevention employee for Target composed an email that was distributed to a group known as the Carolina Organized Retail Theft Task Force, according to the complaint.

The employee’s email — the contents of which included images of Cantrell shopping and allegations that she had tried to pass a counterfeit bill and had shoplifted — was sent to 31 members of the group, according to the complaint. Members included local, state and federal law enforcement offices, malls, department stores, home-improvement stores and grocery stores, the complaint alleged.

The Secret Service went to Cantrell’s work and subjected her to a “custodial interrogation,” but after looking at the $100, determined the bill was genuine and cleared her of any criminal activity, the complaint alleged.

I have a feeling that my wife is going to be spending more money at Target in the coming months to help pay off their legal bills.

Study: Streaming Video Becoming More Mainstream

Have you streamed a video from the internet onto your computer in the last 30 days? Congratulations! You’re in the majority now!

Since December 2007, the percentage of female Internet users ages 12 and older that have streamed a video online in the past 30 days has grown from 45 percent to 54 percent.  The percentage of adults aged 35-54 streaming video shot up from 49 percent to 60 percent.

It’s interesting to consider the business applications for online video. People get attitudes about having to pay for this stuff online, and yet there is a definite gap between the number of page views and the amount of revenue being generated by them.

Chip Off the Ol’ Block

Are you naturally friendly? I think that many of us (myself included) are in such a hurry most days with all the tasks we have to complete that we avoid going out of our way to talk to people in passing because it will slow us down.

But life has a way of making us anything but like God. We are often uncaring, short-tempered, grumpy, and unforgiving—flat-out too much like ourselves and not enough like Him! Remember, we are saved to bear the Family resemblance, to become increasingly more like Jesus and less like ourselves.

The story is told here that a son learned to chat with others by imitating his dad. It illustrated Paul’s quote to be “imitators of God.” Although some may find it to be idle chatter or inconvenient, simply looking someone in the face, greeting them, and maybe even using their name if you know it can go a long way toward building relationships with others.