I meant to type youtube.com but accidentally entered yoyutube.com. The site loaded a dark page with a large blue-gray box and a message roughly saying, "We're preparing your data." I closed the tab immediately and didn't knowingly download or install anything. Could this have been a phishing or malware site, and should I take any additional steps?
2 Answers
The term for this is typosquatting: a domain is made to resemble a familiar site, often to serve ads, redirect visitors, or imitate a login page. Closing the tab was the right move. Don’t revisit it, and if you entered any password or payment information, change those credentials from the real website and enable two-factor authentication.
That was probably a typo-squatting or ad-redirect domain—someone registered a misspelled address to catch visitors and possibly show misleading pages or ads. Simply loading the page usually doesn’t infect an up-to-date device, especially if you didn’t download anything, run a file, install an extension, or enter credentials. Make sure your browser and operating system are updated, check your downloads and installed extensions, and run a scan with your normal security software if you want reassurance.
It’s not literally impossible to be compromised just by visiting a page, since browser exploits exist, but that’s uncommon on a fully patched system. The main risks here would be downloading something or being tricked into providing information.