Apple Acquires 16 Misspelled Variations of iTunes.com Domain Name

[justinfreid]

This is standard practice for any company, and anyone who's ever registered a domain will know that domain sellers always encourage users to do stuff like this too. It works very well at keeping traffic on your site and away from phishers who abuse misspelling domains to trick people with short attention spans into giving their usernames and passwords.

Is it standard practice for a company to acquire misspelled domain names that correspond to a product that's been around for more than ten years and an URL that was originally registered more than thirteen years ago?
While I understand that purchasing misspellings is a good practice to begin with, I find it interesting that Apple chose to make this move now. After all, they've been able to afford to purchase them for years, and, especially with iTunes Match and iCloud coming, perhaps they're developing iTunes in the cloud and they anticipate a that a lot more fingers will be trying to peck out itunes.com.

 

[Jenni8]

Its more to prevent fraud sites than anything. Lots of fraudsters would jump at the opportunity to register such a site name.

I totally agree and just what I was thinking! Back in my PC days most times I would stumble upon a virus or trojan was from entering the site url too quickly and entering it too fast. Simple mistake can cause big problems. Apple doing this just helps security for the users.

I say, smart thinking!

 

[gnasher729]

While I understand that purchasing misspellings is a good practice to begin with, I find it interesting that Apple chose to make this move now. After all, they've been able to afford to purchase them for years, and, especially with iTunes Match and iCloud coming, perhaps they're developing iTunes in the cloud and they anticipate a that a lot more fingers will be trying to peck out itunes.com.

I actually very much prefer if companies don't waste money on such URLs, and if any domain squatter tries to use them, sue their ass off.

 

[0dev]

I actually very much prefer if companies don't waste money on such URLs, and if any domain squatter tries to use them, sue their ass off.

I think you'll find that the effort and cost of "suing their ass off" far supersedes the effort and cost of registering a few domains.

 

[justinfreid]

I actually very much prefer if companies don't waste money on such URLs, and if any domain squatter tries to use them, sue their ass off.

I'd prefer that people who mistype iTunes.com get there without going through DNS lookup hijacking or ending up at a bogus site filled with malware. Besides the cost of registering domain names is trivial, especially to Apple, and suing domain squatters won't protect users in the short run, even though it might in the long run.

 

[timhood]

But they still don't have itune.com

With auto-complete on browsers these days, I wonder how much this really even happens. My browser auto-completes after just the "i". And, really, I don't even go to itunes.com but rarely, as the iTunes app takes me there on its own. The most likely scenario is clicking on a link from an Apple e-mail, which is fat-finger-proof.

 

[gnasher729]

I'd prefer that people who mistype iTunes.com get there without going through DNS lookup hijacking or ending up at a bogus site filled with malware. Besides the cost of registering domain names is trivial, especially to Apple, and suing domain squatters won't protect users in the short run, even though it might in the long run.

Your argument doesn't make sense. If someone managed an attack on DNS servers that redirects you then they don't need you to mistype iTunes.com, and whether Apple owns the domain name or not doesn't matter - the whole point of DNS attacks is that the victim doesn't arrive at the site of the domain owner but somewhere else.

And suing domain owners makes the business of domain squatting unprofitable, which is the best protection.

 

[justinfreid]

Your argument doesn't make sense. If someone managed an attack on DNS servers that redirects you then they don't need you to mistype iTunes.com, and whether Apple owns the domain name or not doesn't matter - the whole point of DNS attacks is that the victim doesn't arrive at the site of the domain owner but somewhere else.

And suing domain owners makes the business of domain squatting unprofitable, which is the best protection.

Before you say my argument doesn't make sense, please consider the following: Comcast the Latest ISP To Try DNS Hijacking - Slashdot http://jstnfrd.com/opfqnv and extrapolate accordingly.
Using the word "hijacking" may embellish the issue a little, but I think you missed the point.

Suing domain squatters is fine, but what do you have against preventing them from doing it in the first place by registering misspellings, exactly? Doing so prevents having to sue, and, once again, prevents malware laden sites from getting traffic in the first place. I'm not saying Apple should register ituennensn.com and ittttunes.com or ijunes.com but buying a couple common misspelings also will get users to their intended destination more quickly. Maybe Apple found that itunes.com was regularly misspelled and acted- domain squatters need not always be involved to make purchasing the misspellings useful.

 

[mrsir2009]

This'll be great for the tiny keyboards on the Lenovo netbooks at school.

 

[mrsir2009]

Funny how they don't have things like 'itune' or 'eyetunes' which people are more likely to type.

 

[ahbdesign]

if you're typing 'itunse.com' when you mean 'google.com,' you're a bit of a nutcase.

Wait, what? You type itunse when you mean to type google? That's some serious fat fingering.

Not a personal attack, but I find it humorous people (including my wife) who type a URL into google, the click on the link from the search results.

(I guess for long domain names to type in the browser search box using suggestions on might save a second or two.

I wouldn't know if itunse pops above iTunes in google's suggestions. They must work hard to keep it there.)

Oops! I realised my post was not clear! I meant that when I go to google sometimes, I type it as googel! And it still redirects me to google.

I meant to say the same thing for iTunes i.e. itunse.com! (That they should have bought this domain as well)

Sorry for the confusion!