The typosquatting checker generates every common typo, lookalike, and homoglyph variant of your domain, then checks each against WhoisFreaks' database of 906M+ registered domains. Every match returns WHOIS contact records and DNS records, so security and brand teams can move directly to takedown or monitoring.
Common questions about keyword search, database coverage, and brand monitoring use cases.
What is typosquatting?
Typosquatting is the practice of registering domain names that are misspellings or visual lookalikes of legitimate brand domains, then using them for phishing, malware delivery, ad fraud, or brand impersonation. Typosquatting is also called URL hijacking. Users land on a typosquatting domain when they mistype the legitimate URL in a browser.
How is typosquatting different from cybersquatting?
Cybersquatting is the broader practice of registering domains that match someone else's trademark, brand, or name, often for resale or extortion. Typosquatting is a subset of cybersquatting focused specifically on misspelled or visually similar versions of a target domain. Most modern typosquatting registrations are used for phishing rather than resale.
Is typosquatting illegal?
In the United States, typosquatting that exploits a registered trademark is actionable under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), with statutory damages from $1,000 to $100,000 per domain. Trademark owners can also file a UDRP complaint with ICANN-accredited dispute providers to recover the domain. Laws vary by country, so consult counsel for local enforcement.
What types of typo variations does the checker generate?
The typosquatting checker generates character omissions, insertions, substitutions, and transpositions, keyboard-adjacent typos, vowel swaps, repetitions, hyphenations, ASCII homoglyphs (such as g00gle), IDN Punycode homoglyphs (such as Cyrillic lookalikes), TLD swaps (.com to .co, .net, .org), and subdomain-style variants (such as login-yourbrand.com). All variants are checked against the registered database.
How fresh is the domain database the checker scans against?
WhoisFreaks ingests newly registered domain data continuously. A newly registered typo variant typically appears in the lookup index within 24 to 48 hours of registration. Daily or weekly scans against high-value brand terms catch typo registrations the same week they are created.
What can I do when I find a registered typosquatting domain?
Common next steps: file a UDRP complaint with an ICANN-accredited dispute provider, send a registrar takedown request, file an ACPA action for U.S. trademarks, add the domain to email and DNS blocklists, register adjacent variants defensively, and feed the registrant details from the WHOIS record into a watchlist for ongoing monitoring of the same actor.
