A cousin domain refers to a website with a deceptively similar name to another website. While possessing a nearly identical domain name to the original website, websites with cousin domains are completely unrelated. These domains can trick or scam customers by prompting them to input personal information, or download malware on their computers by masquerading as a trusted source. Cousin domains are created by registering domains of commonly misspelled companies, or e-mailing users from a fake e-mail address (phishing) appearing to belong to someone else.

For example, cousin domains of ComputerHope.com include CompterHope.com and ComputerHop.com; both are common misspellings, and at first glance, may appear to be the official name of the website. ComputerHope.net, while having the correct website title, has the wrong suffix, and is therefore a cousin domain. While all of these example URLs are set up to redirect the user to our website, a different cousin domain could lead somewhere with no affiliation to Computer Hope.

How to identify a cousin domain

Some ways to identify a cousin domain include the following.

  • Verify the spelling of the domain is correct.
  • Verify the domain suffix (.com, .net, .gov, etc.) is correct.
  • For e-mails, compare the e-mail address to the ones listed on the company’s official website.

Domain squatting, Internet terms, Redirect, Web forwarding

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