Patent describes way of using IP information to separate “legitimate” from “illegitimate” typosquatting.
A diagram from Cisco’s typosquatting patent
Cisco has been granted U.S. Patent Number 10,491,614 (pdf) for “Illegitimate typosquatting detection with internet protocol information.”
The patent is for detecting typo domain names using internet protocol (IP) information. It compares this to other methods of detecting typosquatting, which can necessitate visiting the typo domain name to determine what’s happening with it.
Another “novelty” of the invention is comparing what the inventors call “illegitimate typosquatting” and “legitimate typosquatting.”
The inventors note that many typo domain names are owned by the same company that owns the legitimate domain. These companies purchased the domains as a defensive measure, and these domains don’t need to be marked as bad. Of course, a simple way of doing this is seeing if the domain names using the same IP address as that of the correct domain.
