OzBargain Domain Typo-Squatted
Last week Vikas sent an email to me sometime late in the afternoon…
I am currently with OptusNet and every-time I type in your website OzBargain, it goes to eBay…
Have you done something?
Yes I know sometimes I uploaded half-baked scripts onto OzBargain which caused all kinds of mess, but seriously I have not been able to work on the website for a few weeks due to general busyness. Moreover, why am I sending visitors to eBay? No way! So, maybe Optus stuffed something up? Or maybe OzBargain got hacked and the intruder now redirects everyone to eBay instead (which does have bargains every now and then). I quickly log back onto the site. Check the logs. Nope. Works for me, and I can’t seem to be able to reproduce the issue (always happen at work anyway so I am used to false alarms). Maybe if there is indeed some issues with the network, I’ll be flooded with the emails anyway so I would just wait and see…
An hour later Vikas wrote back and apologised his mistakes.
Scott — Found the problem
Click on this link and see for yourself: <OzBargain with one of ‘a’ missing>.com.au and it goes to eBay.
It must be an honor for ebay to try and get your traffic.
Huh? I know lots of people hate eBay but I do not think they will go this low to typo-squat OzBargain’s domain to get visitors. So I trace the link, and the first hop it brought me to rover.ebay.com/…. For those who are not familiar with it, it is eBay’s partner/affiliate link. So basically if you missed an “a” in the domain name, instead of coming to OzBargain to share the best deals in Australia, you’ll end up on eBay.com.au. Moreover, everything you have purchased on eBay will send a piece of seller fee to the guy who typo-squatted our domain.
Yes. Did I say a “guy”? A bit of googling reveals all the details I need — name, address, phone number, photo + a few other domains as well. While it is permissible to typo-squat domains on gTLD (and people will hate you for it), I do not think it is actually allowed on .au domain — at least auDA has published a policy against it.
Well. Complain has been sent to auDA. Let’s see how fast can they react. By the way, cheers to Vikas for spotting this.
Yep, from what I gather from that Misspelling Policy that domain shouldn't be allowed.
Good luck with it. If there is one thing I hate, its domain squatters.
Although it looks like someone has basically done the same thing to eBay at http://www.e-bay.com.au, albeit most likely legally.
Pretty clear in that case the business name registered solely to squat the domain though, look at the ABN history and you see they were even trading as You Tube (youtube.com.au) in the past.
Yeah. That's pretty dodgy…
Consider it a recognition of your success ;-)
Almost a month since I posted this entry…
And the squatter still has the domain. WTF auDA?!
Given the changes in the domain policy last year, I think you’ll have a hard time getting it back but good luck in any case.
Still redirects to eBay. auDA’s done nothing.
Indeed. auDA is a bit useless. There are quite a few typo squatter (like the plural version of OzBargain). Well I’ll give up here. According to auDA “ozbargain” is not on their blacklist so they are not taking any priority on it. I guess I might need to go and trademark the name but I don’t really want to go down that far.
And the domain is still up today :(
I’ve covered this over at Domainer Income. I’d have the expectation that auDA will act in accordance with their own policy. Start the clock.
;-)