What is Cybersquatting?

Cybersquatting, typosquatting or domain squatting  (also known as domain squatting) is the abusive practice of registering and using an internet domain name that is identical or similar to trademarks, service marks, personal names or company names with the bad faith intent of hijacking traffic for financial profit, delivering malware payloads or stealing intellectual property. Cybersquatting scams are on the rise with 5,516 new cases filed in 2022 — a 10% increase from 2021.1

In the U.S. the domain “whitehouse.com” is one of the earliest and most well-known cases of cybersquatting. Since .com is a more common domain than .gov, users often mistakenly enter “whitehouse.com” instead of “whitehouse.gov,” which diverts people away from the legitimate site. Because of the explicit content on the site, “whitehouse.com” is considered one of the most egregious examples of domain name misuse.