• Johnon.com , Wednesday, December 19, 2007 2 PM

Computer security company McAfee recently published results from a study into typo-squatting, finding that consumers who misspell a popular Web site URL have a 1 in 14 chance (7.2%) of landing on a typo-squatter site. Given that these sites often try to steal personal data and are major sources of spam, McAfee has built tools into its anti-virus suite to protect users from these sites by flagging them as dangerous.

But John Andrews takes offense to the "bad, sloppy research" that McAfee used to hone those tools, and argues that the anti-virus software provider will actually be shaping user's Internet experiences based on its own agenda.

How will the software know whether the owner of criuse.com is a typo-squatter or a legitimate domainer that's in the process of building out a nice cruise information site? If users don't ever click through to the site because of McAfee's warning, will the lack of traffic crush the business before it even gets off the ground?

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