Reducing fraud: Helping one of the world’s leading internet registries to understand typosquatting and improve abuse detection

Database and URL hijacking is a very real and damaging threat for businesses and their brands. Professor David Duce and Dr Faye Mitchell successfully partnered with Nominet, a leading internet domain registry, to help detect abuse of their WHOIS system and develop tools to better understand and deal with typosquatting. Their approach enabled improvements to Nominet’s information services and practices, whilst also influencing the wider technical community. These benefits included better policing of systems, securing brands, reducing fraud and starting to get people thinking about what can be done with data to gain insights and understanding of behaviours