Tale of CPA-Typesquatter

That just does not make people thirst for easy money and profit.

Yesterday we discovered a number of domains with typos, registered on April 3, 2012 by one Typersquatter, which he began to use according to the following scheme:

1. takes the name of a popular resource (A) *;
2. selected with typos the names of the resource (A) and squat;
3. put a redirect (A) - (B) **, where (B) is a resource of the same subject matter;
4. selected with typos the names of the resource (B) and squat;
5. put a redirect (B) - (B), so that (A) thought it was a trick (B);
6. and then ...
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We thought there would be an a la scheme:

- Hello, this is a representative of the resource (B), we here merge the traffic from your typos to yourself, if you want, we will give you the domains for 100,500 money.

But it would somehow look strange, since (B) is not quite a petty player to whom reputation is worth more than traffic fused from typos. Yes, and did not want to believe in the possibility of this.

Emotions (after all, Monday was just beginning) were written to representatives (B), without going into technical details, saying that “they did a good job, thank you”. And they themselves began to analyze the domain field in this context, and, I confess honestly, they even thought “wouldn’t someone pour traffic to myself”? After all, there is someone to pick up (list for dessert)!

But, in practice it turned out like this:

- Hello, hello. This is the technical director of the resource (B), you wrote today that some domains with typos of your name will redirect to us. How do you comment on this?
- Uh ... (told their story from 1 point to 5, further clarifying whether this is not their tricks).
- No, this is not our tricks. These domains are redirected to us via the Belarusian server reg-org.com, and are registered at salaf@tut.by (Sergei V Dubin), the same person under the same nickname is registered as a webmaster in the CPA affiliate AdmitAd. Also, an impressive number of domains have been registered to this address, including GODADY.RU (Note of the author - godaddy.com is one of the largest Western domain registrars).

Here it is - the truth of life, the thirst for profit, the cunning and greed of the "partners"! AdmitAd, by the way, hinted to representatives (B) that they can disable this webmaster, but they do not advise. This is on condition that both (A) and (B) were sitting on the pipe working with AdmitAd. In general, salaf@tut.by is not the only “bad” webmaster in AdmitAd: someone redirects adwords, someone even parks domains into the open, and someone else - the same advertising network.

This begs the question for AdmitAd: how do you check advertising platforms?
The answer immediately suggests itself: Why?

Essentially: since this option of receiving traffic is not a customer attraction, but is getting money for random people (AdmitAda’s cookies “live” for 1-2 months), then it would probably be worth informing customers when they connect?

The conclusions of this story can be made completely different, ranging from "register all your domains with typos and there will be no problems," to "what did you want?".

Dessert :

A conducted analysis of the employment of names with typos, showed that isolated cases of typosquatting are practiced by some large stores, or their webmasters. This, of course - a matter of conscience, but leads to some thoughts. In this row there are large electronics retailers, which occupy the first positions in the TOP-100 online stores according to the version of Kommersant Publishing House, for example.

And here, the tip of the iceberg of free domain names with typos (several large online stores):

BECOMPACT.RU

becomapct.ru
becompatc.ru
becopmact.ru
beocmpact.ru
ebcompact.ru

ENTER.RU:

enetr.ru
entrr.ru
entet.ru
etner.ru

MVIDEO.RU:

mivdeo.ru
mvdieo.ru
mvidep.ru
mvidei.ru

CITILINK.RU:

ciitlink.ru
citiilnk.ru
citilikn.ru
citilnik.ru

ELDORADO.RU:

edlorado.ru
eldirado.ru
eldoardo.ru
eldoeado.ru
eldoradi.ru
eldoraod.ru
eldroado.ru
elodrado.ru
ledorado.ru

TEHNOSILA.RU:

ethnosila.ru
tehnisila.ru
tehnosilo.ru
tehnoaila.ru
tehnodila.ru
tehnoisla.ru
tehnosial.ru
tehnosilq.ru
tehnosiola.ru
tehnosiula.ru
tehnosjla.ru
tehnoslia.ru
tehnosola.ru
tehonsila.ru
tenhosila.ru
thenosila.ru
yehnosila.ru

XCOM-SHOP.RU:

xcom-shp.ru
cxom-shop.ru
xcm-shop.ru
xco-shop.ru
xcmo-shop.ru
xcom-hsop.ru
xcom-shpo.ru
xcom-ship.ru
xcom-sop.ru
xocm-shop.ru

The list of drop-in domains with redirect (A) - (B) still works:

aitcomp.ru
aptcomp.ru
apicomp.ru
apitcmp.ru
apitcop.ru
apitomp.ru
pitcomp.ru

Useful links:

Typosquatting on Wikipedia: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typsquatting
News of 2004 about cybersquatters who went to prison for typosquatting: http://stra.teg.ru/lenta/security/5936

Heroes of the Festivities:
* (A) - ApitComp store: http://ApitComp.ru
** (B) - BiCompact store: http://BeCompact.ru

Thanks to the staff of the store BiKompakt for prompt response and assistance in solving the problem and the preparation of this material. I hope, the post will be commented not only by the representatives of the companies indicated in it, but also by independent webmasters-experts. Your opinion is very important to us! What advise you to do in this situation?