- Decodo reports 68% rise in digital squatting scams over five years
- Techniques include typosquatting, combosquatting, TLD squatting, and homograph attacks, tricking users into sharing credentials or payments
- WIPO logged 6,200 domain disputes in 2025, the highest ever; Decodo urges brands to register domains beyond .com for protection
Digital squatting is getting increasingly popular among scammers, ruining businesses and their reputations at an unprecedented pace.
This is according to a new report from Decodo, which said that there’s been a 68% increase in these cases in half a decade.
In a new press release shared with TechRadar Pro, Decodo said that, according to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there were 6,200 domain name disputes in 2025, the highest ever in the organization’s history, and a 68% increase since 2020.
Fraudulent purchases
Digital squatting is a type of scam in which hackers register domains mimicking established brands. That can include typosquatting (registering domains that are a typo of a legitimate business, for example “Microsfot” instead of “Microsoft”), combosquatting (adding keywords to brand names, such as “microsoft-login”, or “ebay-discounts”), Top-Level Domain squatting (registering a new domain for an established brand, for example “microsoft.ai” when the company is on the .com domain), and homograph attacks (using visually similar characters, for example “rnicrosoft” instead of “microsoft”).
Cybercriminals can do all sorts of malicious things when they trick people into visiting their websites. They can get them to try and log in, stealing credentials for important services. They can even get them to “buy” something, as was the case with Decodo.
Using its old branding, Smartproxy, hackers registered fraudulent domains and tricked people into purchasing services that they never received.
“We’ve spent years earning our customers’ trust through reliable service and ethical practices,” said Vytautas Savickas, CEO of Decodo. “Impersonators don’t just steal money. They deliver low-quality services that fall far short of what real companies provide. Every fake site makes it harder for honest businesses to earn trust and for customers to know who to rely on.”
Decodo argues that prevention offers the most cost-effective approach to the problem, urging organizations to register domains beyond their primary .com address.
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