Typowha?

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Dec 7, 2005 9:08PM

Typosquatting. We knew people did it, but we didn't know there was a name for it. Typosquatting is when someone buys domain names of competitors but with typos in them and then redirects people to their site. So, like if you accidentally typed in "chicagotribuen.com" you'd be taken to the Sun-Times site. Sneaky, huh? But did you know you can get in deep doo-doo for it?

Today Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against Chicago Diamonds, Inc for taking business away from its competitors and tricking online shoppers by typosquatting. Madigan says that the jeweler usually added or subtracted a single letter from the legitimate domain names of its competitors. So like La Ron Jewelers in Chicago says that Chicago Diamonds created a copycat web address that redirected traffic to diamonds-chicago.com by deleting one letter from the actual La Ron Jewelers web address, laronjewelers.com. Chicagoist tested it out and sure 'nuff. Type in laronjeweler.com (no "s" at the end) and you go to diamonds-chicago.com.

The lawsuit says Chicago Diamonds violated the IL Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and te IL Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. It seeks a civil penalty of $50k and additional penalties of $50k per violation to fraud. Also, the defendant would have to transfer the registration of all the typo domain names to the affected competitors.

Note to self: Register gaperblock.com and have it redirect to chicagoist.com. Kidding!!!!