Tim Lince published an article on WorldTrademarkReview.com that has found a new kind of domain infringement. It is being called soundsquatting and the victims are the visually impaired.

From the article:

Recent research has revealed the extent of a newly discovered type of domain name abuse. Dubbed ‘soundsquatting’, it is based on homophone confusion of popular domains and the authors of the study have urged trademark counsel to take note due to the high proportion of malicious domains uncovered.

Currently, the primary victim of soundsquatting is sound-dependent users (such as the severely visually impaired) who cannot properly interact with computers and other internet-connected devices without the help of assistive technologies. Using text-to-speech software, a soundsquatted domain will ‘sound’ near-identical to an authoritative domain, therefore tricking users to access the link. However, the rise of devices using speech-to-text tools, whether phones, tablets or newer smart watches, means that soundsquatting has the potential to become a more mainstream problem.

Looking at Alexa’s top 10,000 websites, the report identified 8,476 domains  that looked vulnerable to soundsquatting and discovered that 1,823 (22%) were already registered. Primary uses for those registered domains include displaying ads, conducting phishing attacks, installing malicious software and stealing traffic from targeted domains. For example, YouTube has three soundsquatted domains: ‘yewtube.com’ (registered, on sale), ‘ewetube.com’ (registered, redirects to a vitamin online store) and ‘utube.com’ (registered, mock video site with pop-up ads). In total, 1,037 (57%) of the 1,823 registered soundsquatted domains were tagged as “malicious” (with a majority dedicated to displaying ads) and 155 (8.5%) were registered by the targeted brand owner.

Read the full story on WorldTrademarkReview