Beware: ?oogle.com Is Not Actually Google.com

You can tell immediately that something is off about the following URL: ?oogle.com. The ‘G’ is capitalized for no discernible reason and its font size is too small. ?oogle.com isn’t a link to the search engine we all know and love. It’s in fact spam.

The fishy link was discovered embedded in pro-Trump rhetoric by The Next Web while the team was searching for Google Analytics. The address leads you to xn--oogle-wmc.com, which in turn takes you to the following long and rambling link that is clearly spam and no one should click:

[money.get.away.get.a.good.job.with.more.pay.and.you.are.okay.money.it.is.a.gas.grab.that.cash.with.both.hands.and.make.a.stash.new.car.caviar.
four.star.daydream.think.i.ll.buy.me.a.football.team.money.get.back.i.am.alright.jack.ilovevitaly.com]

Screenshot From the Fake Google page

And, according to Analytics Edge, the imitation ‘G’ is more precisely referred to as Latin Letter Small Capital, Unicode 0262, and it is part of a category of special characters that allow people to make unique domain names, such as http://?.com.

While you should now know to avoid this particular link, the danger is that there are other similar phishing scams out there in the wild, disguised as legitimate links. If you are in a hurry, aren’t being too careful, or your eyesight isn’t too sharp, you may very well end up clicking on a cleverly disguised URL while trying to access your bank account.

To avoid falling victim to these types of scams, it’s best to type out the URL yourself and avoid links provided by someone you don’t trust.