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Typo-squatting Site hi-resFirst published: 05th July 2016
The Bank of East Asia, Limited (BEA) has issued a clarification of their website address, noting that they have no affiliation with the site http://www.wwwhkbea.com/ and stating that their homepage is http://www.hkbea.com/. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has issued a warning that links to the BEA clarification and claims that the site http://www.wwwhkbea.com/ is fraudulent. The HKMA advises anyone who has provided personal information to the website or conducted any financial transactions through the website to contact BEA and the Police.
At the time of writing, the site did not resemble the BEA website and merely provided generic advertising links to banking services. Contrary to the HKMA suggestion, the site does not attempt to persuade visitors to enter their online banking credentials. The URL of the fake site, www.wwwhkbea.com, does resemble the BEA website URL, www.hkbea.com and may be reached by simply mis-typing the genuine URL in a browser with auto-complete. The proper classification of this incident appears to be Typo-Squatting, defined as creating websites on common mis-typings of popular addresses to sell advertising links. While typo-squatting is annoying, it lacks the intent to deceive that is required for fraud.
