Monday, December 10, 2007

Google.cm and More Used for Typosquatting
By Colin Colehour

Just noticed that if you mistype certain Google domains , they redirect to different affiliate programs.

Affected domains:

• www.google.cm – Redirects to Netflix affiliate program
• www.gmail.cm – Redirects to Netflix affiliate program
• mail.google.cm – Redirects to Blockbuster affiliate program
• youtube.cm – Redirects to an ad page
• grandcentral.cm – Redirects to agoga.com

The .cm TLD belongs to Cameroon. I stumbled upon the first redirected domain name after I misstyped gmail.com. Wonder how many visitors end up on the wrong web site because of a misspelling with .com domain names.

The Times Online article “Cameroon strikes it rich on the internet” has more. George in the comments adds, “If you use OpenDNS as your DNS [see FAQ], they have an option (on by default) that corrects .cm to .com except for a few hundred legitimate sites.”

[Update: Disclosure – Colin worked as a contractor for the Google Partner Solutions organization for 1 year; at the time of him writing this post he already did not work there, and we also originally disclosed this relation in Colin’s first blog post. Just figured it is worth it to repeat it in his posts. -Philipp]

Google.cm and More Used f ... by Colin Colehour | Comments (3+11)

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