Are you familiar with the term “typosquatting?” Well, you will likely wish you were not by the end, and it represents one of the newest threats to users of tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) tools. Thankfully, though, the appearance of this tactic is not costing Microsoft much in stock price. In fact, investors sent shares up in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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Typosquatting is a practice that relies on an odd convention of computer font and how it appears on a screen. If you have ever noticed that “m” looks a lot like “rn” on a screen, then you may have caught the most critical element of typosquatting already. Thus, when a potential cybercriminal sends you a properly-formatted email message or the like that asks for your Microsoft login credentials, and sends the request from “noreply@rnicrosoft.com,” the result is that it looks even more authentic than normal, but is clearly not.
Not everyone is susceptible to this, of course. Some fonts will render the rn combination much differently, and thus, more transparently, than others. Thus, security experts offer one critical step to better distinguish the sender email addresses: before interacting, expand the full sender address. This will allow you the opportunity to spot a potential typosquatter in progress.
XCrocs
And then, in what may have been the single strangest cross-promotional bit of marketing in years, Microsoft got together with the people who make Crocs shoes to make shoes with a Windows XP theme. Now they are doing it all over again, making Xbox-themed Crocs dubbed the “Xbox Crocs.”
The Xbox Crocs go on sale November 25, and can be yours for the eye-watering price of $80 a pair. Those who want to go even farther with the deal can pick up a five-pack of “shoe charms” that include Doom, Fallout, Halo, Sea of Thieves, and World of Warcraft-themed charms to attach to the Xbox Crocs.
Is Microsoft a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 33 Buys and two Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 10.75% rally in its share price over the past year, the average MSFT price target of $629.98 per share implies 32.1% upside potential.
