Typosquatting

Common typosquatting techniques include swapping adjacent letters, adding or omitting a single character, substituting similar-looking characters such as a zero for the letter O, or using a different top-level domain such as .co instead of .com. A visitor who mistypes a company's web address, or clicks a lookalike link in a phishing email, lands on a page designed to look identical to the real site, often complete with a fake login form. Some registered typosquat domains sit unused for years, only activated once the attacker is ready to launch a campaign.

Typosquatting is a persistent risk because it does not require compromising the legitimate website at all, only registering a similar name, which makes it cheap and difficult to fully prevent. It is frequently combined with phishing emails and brand impersonation, where the lookalike domain lends false credibility to a fraudulent message referencing a bank, government service, or well known company. Organizations serving Indonesian consumers are targeted with domains that mimic local bank names or common .co.id patterns, since customers may not scrutinize the exact spelling of a familiar brand.

Organizations can proactively register common misspellings and alternate extensions of their own domain, and monitor for newly registered lookalike domains using domain watch services. Employees and customers should be trained to check a web address carefully before entering credentials, ideally by typing known addresses directly or using saved bookmarks rather than following links. Browser security features and DNS filtering that flag or block known typosquatting domains add a technical layer that catches mistakes before they lead to a compromised page.