The State of Typo-Squatting 2007

By the end of 2007, at least 8,000 URLs using the word iphone will be registered, according to a well known domain expert. The most valuable – iphone.com – is owned by Apple itself, but when Steve Jobs announced the product early in 2007, Apple didn’t own the iphone domain yet. One expert estimates that Apple paid at least $1 million to buy that piece of valuable Web real estate.

Among the 8,000 registered URLs incorporating iphone are community fan sites, rumor and hack sites and, of course, scam sites. Freeappleiphonesnow dot com claims to offer free iPhones and variants that don’t even exist (like the iPhone “shuffle” and “nano”.) The URL is nothing more than a redirect to royalsweeps dot com. When we tested the site, we received debt consolidation offers, get rich quick solicitations, “free” cell phone prizes and other questionable e-mail.

Read the article HERE.