FTC Shutters Over 5,500 Deceptive Web Sites
WinInfo | at | by Mike
A US federal court shut down over 5,500 Web sites Monday after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a motion last week accusing the sites of illegally diverting Web surfers from their intended destination and bombarding those users with pop-up ads. The Web sites are all owned by a Pennsylvania man who purchased thousands of domain names that resemble popular Web sites, but are one or more characters off from the correct URL. The man was attempting to capitalize on misspellings, by diverting surfers to page after page full of ads, most of which revolve around pornography or gambling.