Possible login/password grabbing ploy

Or maybe these are also the "adult site operators"?

At a conference I tried accessing ESPN web site :slight_smile: by typing in the URL -
typed sportszone.espnet.com by mistake (instead of espnet.sportszone.com) -
and was surprised by the "Click if you are over 18" message... have heard
from others that several other mis-spellings also lead to similar sites.

Any trademark protection ("webmarks?") available to the folks who run
these popular sites?

-amit

:> I have found that most of the common mis-spellings of our domain name
:> have been registered with the Internic by a company named Americaoffline.

:Yup. They've been busy registering dropped-letter variants of many
:folks. All the zones I've looked at are merely wildcard A records, not
:purposeful hosts. I was sorely disappointed that
:http://www.americaoffline.com/ contains no references to malicous nor
:humourous stuff. Personally, I was hoping for large-scale lampooning.

:Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything
:of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains?

There isn't any reason why you couldn't register a domain name as a
trademark. Whether a purposeful misspelling like that would support a
dilution or false light action is another matter entirely.

Cheers,
-- jra