OzBargain Typo Squatted – Diverts To eBay

August 9, 1 Comment

Popular Australian bargain site, ozbargain.com.au has been typosquatted. That’s right – if you visit ozbargin.com.au (note that its missing an “a”) right now, the website diverts to eBay.

auDA has a “Prohibition on Misspellings Policy (2008-09)” which specifically states under section 4 “Scope of Prohibition”:

“4.1 The prohibition on misspellings applies where:

a) the domain name is a misspelling of an entity, personal or brand name that does not belong to the registrant; and

b) the registrant has deliberately registered the misspelling in order to trade on the reputation of the other entity, person or brand.

4.2 For the purposes of the prohibition, a domain name will be regarded as a misspelling if it falls into one of the following categories:

a) the singular version of a plural name, or the plural version of a singular name (eg. woolworth.com.au, safeways.com.au);

b) a name with missing letters (eg. yhoo.com.au);

c) a name with additional letters (eg. quantas.com.au);

d) a name with transposed letters (eg. goolge.com.au, wetspac.com.au);

e) a name with letters replaced by numbers, or numbers replaced by letters (eg. 9msn.com.au);

f) a hyphenated version of a name (eg. e-bay.com.au, micro-soft.com.au);

g) a name prefixed by “www” (eg. wwwseek.com.au); or

h) any other name that auDA determines is a deliberate misspelling, having regard to the surrounding circumstances.”

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The ozbargin.com.au domain was last modified March 21, 2009; however its not known how long this has been going on for, nor how much the squatter has made in eBay affiliate sales (if any).

The company that owns ozbargin.com.au is YEE TECH PTY. LTD – ABN: 94102253734 registered in Baulkham Hills NSW.

A complaint has already been sent to auDA – lets see how long it takes them to act.

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