Subtle character change
A familiar name contains a missing, repeated, reversed, substituted, or adjacent-key character.
Typosquatting Awareness
How to Recognize and Report Typosquatting
Typosquatting uses a domain name that resembles a trusted address through misspelling, missing or added characters, transposition, or another small visual change.
Use this guide to turn the threat into a clear employee decision, a safe practice scenario, and a reporting step your organization can support.
Plain-English definition • Warning signs • Safe simulation ideas • Reporting practice
01Understand the threat
Typosquatting: a practical definition
Typosquatting uses a domain name that resembles a trusted address through misspelling, missing or added characters, transposition, or another small visual change.
The domain may be used for websites, email, or redirects. Careful inspection can help, but employees should not be expected to detect every visual variation, especially on small screens.
Source: CISA Phishing Guidance
02Recognition clues
Warning signs employees can check in a typosquatting message
No single clue proves that a message is malicious. Teach employees to combine the request, sender, business context, destination, and available verification route before acting.
Unfamiliar suffix or extra word
The address adds a service term, region, security label, hyphen, or different domain ending.
Known brand, unexpected task
The message asks the employee to sign in, pay, download, or change account details outside the normal workflow.
03Safe response
Move from suspicion to a supported next step
| Moment | Employee action | Program preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Before acting | Use a saved application, known address, directory, or existing supplier record rather than correcting or following the address in the message. | Publish the authentic contact, application, or reporting route somewhere employees can reach without using the message. |
| When uncertain | Pause the request and report it through the approved channel with enough context for review. | Explain what the response team needs and how employees will know that their report was received. |
| After an interaction | Stop, contact the responsible team promptly, and describe the action taken without hiding the mistake. | Provide a well-known response route and avoid communications that discourage early reporting. |
Source: NIST: Recognizing, verifying, and reporting phishing
04Practice safely
Typosquatting simulation and discussion ideas
Choose one learning objective per exercise. Use fictional people, organizations, accounts, payments, documents, and events, and test the reporting route before sending to employees.
Domain comparison
Compare original fictional domains and identify the known application route employees should use.
Mobile sender review
Demonstrate how representative mail clients expose the full address on a small screen.
Supplier lookalike
Practice verifying a fictional payment request whose domain differs by one character.
05Campaign workflow
Build the exercise around a decision employees can repeat
- 1
Define the behavior
Write down the typosquatting clue being practiced, the expected action, the authorized audience, and the owner of follow-up.
- 2
Confirm the real process
Test the independent verification route, message-reporting option, response handoff, and employee support path from a representative account.
- 3
Pilot the scenario
Check delivery, links, landing content, accessibility, event records, automated inspection, stop conditions, and the explanation employees will receive.
- 4
Review in context
Reconcile intended recipients, successful deliveries, unique employee events, verified reports, response handling, and completed follow-up before drawing conclusions.
Source: NIST SP 800-50 Rev. 1: Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program
06Useful measurement
Evaluate recognition, reporting, and the surrounding process
Record actual counts and denominators for delivery, unique recipient events, reports, and follow-up. Separate automated email inspection and repeat events where the available evidence supports doing so.
A typosquatting exercise samples one scenario under one set of conditions. It does not establish an employee's intent, overall security awareness, or likelihood of responding the same way to a real attack.
Use findings to improve the real workflow: clearer verification instructions, easier reporting, faster response handling, better role-specific training, or a business control that reduces reliance on email alone.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Can employees catch every typosquatted domain?
No. Visual inspection is imperfect. Known application routes and independent verification provide a more repeatable response for important requests.
Is typosquatting the same as domain spoofing?
Typosquatting registers or uses a similar-looking domain. Exact-domain spoofing forges a trusted domain without necessarily registering a lookalike.
Can typosquatting be used in a phishing simulation?
It can be practiced when the scenario is authorized, proportionate, and tied to a real reporting or verification process. Use domains reserved for the exercise and prevent external discovery or genuine mail receipt. Do not register confusing versions of real customer or supplier domains without legal and security approval.
How should typosquatting simulation results be measured?
Review successful delivery, unique employee events, reports, response handling, and completed follow-up. Include scenario difficulty and operating context, and do not treat a click or report as a complete measure of employee risk.
Sources & further reading
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Turn typosquatting awareness into a repeatable response.
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