Have I Been Squatted The research

Look
again.

This is not apple.com.

The first five letters of this address are Cyrillic. They look like Latin letters, but they spell a different domain.

A research demo by Have I Been Squatted.

Compare the letters
A Latin e made of tiny e characters and a Cyrillic ө made of tiny ө characters.
Latin e and Cyrillic ө, each built from tiny versions of itself.

The address, letter by letter

Real apple.com
Lookalike аррӏө.com

Both rows use your device's interface font, the same font as the address bar.

To a computer, Cyrillic а and Latin a are as different as a and b. Swap all five letters and you get a separate domain that anyone can register. We registered this one for the research.

Domain names can only contain basic Latin letters, digits, and hyphens, so your computer looks this one up as xn--80a6aa68c8d.com. Chrome shows that form instead when it decides a name is imitating another. This one passes the check, and the research explains why.

How to protect yourself

  • Do not trust how an address looks. Browsers, email, and chat apps can all display this name as apple.com.
  • Go to sites directly. Use a bookmark or type the address yourself instead of following links in messages.
  • Let a password manager fill in logins. It matches the domain, not how it looks, so it will not fill your Apple password on this page.
  • Keep your browser up to date. Updates add to the checks browsers use to catch lookalikes. This name shows those checks still miss some.