Cybersquatters Rise Again, Tots Targeted

Did you ever type "Dosney" when you were looking for "Disney"? "ClubPeguin" when you're trying to spell "ClubPenguin"? If you or your kids suffer from chronic slips of the fingers or misspellings, you're ripe targets for a cybersquatter. Misspell a popular website's name and, according to this new study, you may find yourself at anything from a porn site to a parody site.

Cybersquatting—buying domain names with the intent to mislead or profit from the goodwill of someone else's trademark—has been on the scene since the dawn of domain names. As a matter of fact, I thought it was old news. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act was passed in 1999.

But according to Citizen Hawk, a company that specializes in protecting corporate brands, the total number of cybersquatters has exploded in last few years. Graham MacRobie, the company president, says that there are thousands of instances of cybersquatting on 10 of the top learning and entertainment web sites for young children.

Kids' Web Site Domains:

• Cartoon Network: 537
• ClubPenguin: 628
• Disney: 247
• DiscoveryKids: 225
• FunBrain: 398
• Nickelodeon: 318
• NickJr: 199
• PBSKids: 349
• Sesame Street: 246
• Webkinz: 255

MacRobie says that infringers gravitate towards places where young kids flock because kids are so easily duped into clicking. He attributes the rise in cybersquatting to the fact that purchasing a domain name is cheaper than ever, and that newer techniques like parking (which allows you to register a domain for future use) and tasting (which lets you sample a domain name for five days before committing) have become more popular.

I watched MacRobie demonstrate his company's technology via a remote meeting. His tools crawl the web looking for misspellings and other trademark infringements. They also look at how these sites are being monetized.

He showed me 628 instances of misspelled ClubPenguin (including Clubbenguin pictured here) and we drilled down to see that many were owned by some shady characters that had pretty raunchy sites. He also showed me misspellings of the word "Yahooligans," and pointed out that many of those misspelled domains were owned by Yahoo! in a proactive attempt to control their brand by buying up any domains that might be look-alikes or sound-alikes. (A good idea for anyone who's in charge of protecting the brand he says.)

I've been playing around with common misspellings trying to duplicate Citizen Hawk's findings, but I haven't turned up too much excitement. Most misspellings I entered into Yahoo!, Google, and MSN responded with a "Did you mean Disney?" search return. They attempted to correct my misspelling. Only once did I find myself swept away to a site of ill repute when I accidentally typed ClubPengoin.

So now I'm asking you. What's your experience with cybersquatters? Have you entered a URL that was close, but not quite the brand you wanted and found yourself in an unsavory place? Has it happened to your kids? Is Citizen Hawk protecting us from a current condition or an old story?