Blockbuster typosquatting netflex.com
Blockbuster Video, whose online business “isn’t growing as quickly as they expected” has stooped to an all time low. In a move that’s basically the hi-tech version of taking a delay of game penalty to run the last 45 seconds off the clock, Blockbuster has redirected a phantom site, “Netflex,” to their own Blockbuster.com.
From Hackingnetflex–I mean FLIX–.com:
Riante reports that someone has registered the domain Netflex.com and redirects it to Blockbuster.com. The Netflex.com domain is registered to Domains-Company.com, LLC, and is a “private” registration. Why would someone besides Blockbuster register the domain and redirect it?
The practice of registering a domain that is a common mispelling of a word is known as “typosquatting.” The Wikipedia page on typosquatting says that this practice is typically used to redirect users to “pornographic websites” or “…to distribute viruses, adware, spyware or other malware,” but I think Blockbuster just wants to get a few people who thought they were going to Netflix.com.
Pretty repugnant, I think. Then again, desperate times call for desperate measures. Right, Blockbuster?
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UPDATE I did a little snooping and made some discoveries of my own. It seems that the server that hosts Netflex.com also hosts somewhere on the ups of 500 other websites, which makes it highly unlikely that Netflex is a Blockbuster-owned URL. Furthermore, according to this post on Binary Rock back in May, Netflex.com used to redirect to Netflix.com via a frame (the same method used now to redirect surfers to Blockbuster). The evidence suggests that a referral company is actually behind the redirects, which, incidentally means that Blockbuster is indirectly responsible, since they’re paying the company. Whoever owns Netflex.com, they’re not redirecting to Blockbuster out of the goodness of their hearts.