Typosquatters who targeted Twitter and Wikipedia have been fined £100,000 ($157,000) each for operating premium-rate phone competitions on two websites.
PhonepayPlus, a UK premium-rate regulator, punished R&D Media Europe and Una Valley for misleading consumers. The Dutch companies had registered wikapedia.com and twtter.com, and asked consumers to enter contact details to win prizes.
Participants began receiving SMS messages asking them to answer quiz questions. Each message cost £1.50 ($2.40) to receive and a further £1.50 ($2.40) to respond to. PhonepayPlus said the companies had breached the fair use code of practice and ordered them to refund all customers who had lost money.
Both domains are still active, as PhonepayPlus cannot remove them, but they can be transferred through arbitration mechanisms such as the UDRP.