- Typo squatters are all over the place, but they’re ramping up their attacks
- Typo squatters can be easy to identify if you read things carefully and take time to check links
- Together we can make typo squatters vanish from the face of the Earth by not falling for their stupid scams
In the crypto world, scammers are constantly looking for a quick and easy pay day. If they put half as much effort into working a real job as they did when trying to scam people and steal, they’d probably end up earning more. Anyway, their lack of moral compass aside. Typo squatters are a real issue, so make sure you’re being careful.
I’m not bitter. I’ve never been a victim of typosquatting, but scamming people is akin to theft, and if you’re a scammer, you’re nothing but pondlife scum. So, here’s how you can spot typo squatters and make sure that you don’t fall prey to their dastardly plans.
Real Companies Don’t Use All Uppercase in URLs
Thanks to whoever designed the alphabet, there are lots of characters that look like others when typed in upper or lower case. By exploiting these weaknesses in the English language, scammers can try to trick you into clicking a link that’s not legit.
Following the recent leak of Ledger data whereby more than 270,000 people had their cell phone number, email address and residential address leaked online, scammers have been having a field day. This means more and more scam messages and emails, and thankfully scammers are fairly stupid.
In a recent SMS sent to a cell phone number that was leaked in the Ledger hack, you can clearly see the URL of the address sent was all in upper case. Never in the history of the legit universe has a company done that – unless their marketing team is comprised of potatoes.
This has allowed the scammers to swap out the capital I (i) for a lower-case L (l). If you read it quickly or without your glasses on, it can be hard to spot. But, to the trained eye, or if you read it carefully, you can clearly see the spacing is off. This should be more than enough to tell you something is wrong…
It’s Not the First Time
Typo squatters are all over the internet, and this isn’t the first time they’ve struck. Typo squatters have stolen millions of dollars’ worth of crypto using these techniques, proving that they do work. Unfortunately, these types of scammers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. So, that just means you need to savvy up and learn how to spot these typo squatters so that they stop making money – perhaps then they’ll go and get a real job and stop stealing…
