A short lesson on identifiying a fake website by its address (URL)

A fake article is filtering through DU that comes from a website with an internet address very similar to the one for a major publication. Note:

usatoday.com = REAL
usatoday-go.com = FAKE

For a spoof URL, the bogus one above is pretty clever. USA Today is a familiar brand name. Go.com is also well known. If Gannett (USA Today) and Disney (Go.com) were to merge, their combined internet address might look very similar to the spoof, except different. With a dot. Not a dash.

There are Top Level Domains (TLD). Examples: .com, .net, .org, .tv, etc.

There are domain names. Google is a domain name. Google.com is a domain name plus a TLD.

Then there are subdomains and/or directories. News can be a subdomain:

news.google.com
maps.google.com
images.google.com

The dots in a web address have a very specific purpose, simply, to delineate TLDs from domains and subdomains. Slashes delineate protocols, directories and pages but I'm getting away from the point now.

Hyphens (and numbers) are the only non-alphabetical characters allowed in a domain name. The person who registered the spoof site's domain name registered this:

usatoday-go.com usatoday hyphen go dot com

Not:

usatoday.com

If I were willing to risk a copyright lawsuit, I could probably register a domain name such as google-puppies.com, pay for hosting and make it live within hours. I could liberate some google-branded graphics, upload them to my server and slap up a few dog pictures and fool a lot of people.

It's not hard to spoof a website and sometimes it's easy to get tricked by one.