An article from Bedel Security mentioned an increase in typosquatting activity in financial institutions. Typosquatting is when someone creates a website with a very similar domain name as the legitimate website they are targeting. They even go as far as rebuilding the site to look exactly the same in attempt to steal information from the end user.
How to protect yourself from typosquatting
- You can use DNSWISTER to help find sites that are similar to yours, or to identify domain names like yours that could potentially be used for suspicious activity.
- To avoid attacks make sure you’re double checking the URL you typed to make sure it’s correct.
- Check to make sure their is a lock icon to the left of the URL bar to confirm it’s a secure website.
- According to Bedel, “There are also paid services which will perform this monitoring, and many of these services are able to determine whether a site has actually had traffic diverted to it because the services have relationships with major DNS providers that direct the traffic.”
If you want to find our more about typosquatting check out McAffee’s article.