Please take care when you type internet domain names, whether into an address box or at the command line!

Domain-squatters are people who register internet domain names which are very similar to other “real” names.  They do this in the hope of attracting mis-directed traffic, generally either for advertising purposes or so that they can steal credentials for later use.  For example, c.uk is registered to “a non-UK Corporation”, and if you mis-type www.inf.ed.ac.uk as www.inf.eda.c.uk you will be taken to a completely different site altogether.  Roughly half of the possible single-letter .uk domains are registered, as are many two-letter permutations and truncations.

Within Informatics we attempt to block these, by having our own nameservers redirect to the bit-bucket. Many large corporations also register common typos of their own names: for example gooogle.com will redirect to google.com.

Elsewhere though, it’s down to care and vigilance. Don’t just click through unexpected responses. Take a second look to see what’s really going on. And if in doubt, ask.

You can find some guidance on data security on our computing.help pages.

Beware of Domain-squatters / Computing Systems by is licensed under a