Popular domains 'cloned by cyber criminals'

There are a growing number of websites that are attempting to imitate well-known Web 2.0 domain names such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, a report has found.

An increasing number of sites which have no official connection to these domains have been investigated by Websense.

MySpace is the most popular domain name that appears in unrelated URLs, although Facebook is closely behind. The report noted that Twitter domain imitations are significantly lower, but this is expected because it is a newer Web 2.0 tool.

Websense stated: "The main reason for creating a copycat domain is to circumvent products that filter the original domain. This is particularly worrying, because anonymous proxies are often the gateway to malware and security risks."

Charles Renert, senior director of advanced content research at Websense, said domain-name cloning of Web 2.0 tools is popular with cyber criminals because they are well-liked and recognisable websites and therefore a large number of people trust these sites and the content on them.

The websites are also easy to compromise because anyone can create and post content.

Written by Debra Hastings-Henry