New jargon word: ‘typosquatters’

Steve Safran August 23rd, 2006

Microsoft is suing people who take URLs designed to take advantage of a mistyped Microsoft URL. (And I’ve typed it as Microfost so many times, I’ve gone to these weasel sites before.) I wouldn’t have cared much about the story for LR - another MS lawsuit, yawn - but the portmanteau word in the headline caught my eye. As the longtime pusher of “viewsers,” I support any effort to coin a new word. In this case, people who squat on URLs designed to take avantage of bad typers are called “typosquatters.” I like it.

10 Comments Add your own

  • 1. thelosangeleschannel  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 9:03 am

    safran, should it bother you so, why not call in the lr legal team and go after the fine folks at pool.com? their lostresort.com “weasel site” is a blatant attempt to land a load of lr typosquatters.

  • 2. Ted V.  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 1:27 pm

    LA Channel: And your bias is in favor of all the different cityname/channel URLs you squat on, right?

    Go to clickonmeetingplace (dot) com for more information on this person\’s holdings. Or do the DNS lookup.

  • 3. themanhattanchannel  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 2:27 pm

    by all means, please do.

    but it was really just a joke, teddy.

  • 4. thetampachannel  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    btw- who is SQUATTING anyways????

    last we looked we held 9 of the top 15 market names with the remaining 6 scattered amongst 4 other parties.

    i will agree though, they are covetted. therefore we have decided NOT to pursue legal action at this time:)

  • 5. Ted V.  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    That’s a great business you got there. Touch a nerve, did I?

  • 6. thedetroitchannel  |  August 23rd, 2006 at 3:07 pm

    only with your tone of voice.

  • 7. Crocodile Caucus » &hellip  |  September 11th, 2006 at 11:42 am

    [...] I agree that typosquatters is a really great term, I think I’ll be using it myself in the future [...]

  • 8. gregg martinez  |  September 30th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    is it legal i open a website selling atv parts

    another domain name atvconnect

    mine atvsconnect

    now they are mad and make threats

  • 9. Nico  |  November 26th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

    Interesting…

  • 10. Lucy  |  January 14th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Wow, thanks for the excellent information!

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