What is a URL?
Your home has a unique address consisting of a street, city, state, and zip code, and this full address distinguishes it from every other house on the planet. Every website has a unique address called a Universal Resource Locator (URL). You should know that every URL is unique and can only take you to one website because spammers sometimes spoof URLs to trick you into going where you don’t want to go! Scammers rely on misspellings and incorrect domain names to lead victims to dangerous websites.
Some popular website addresses (see if you recognize these) include pbs.org, nbc.com, and fbi.gov. How about walmart.com or costco.com? These are the “friendly” addresses or domains that are easy to read and remember. When you type these URLs into a browser’s address box and press Enter, you go to their respective home pages. The entirety of the address is a little different. Your browser fills in the missing pieces.
Anatomy of a URL
An entire URL looks like this: https://websitename.extension. Our example domains included pbs.org and costco.com. The domain extension, the letters after the dot (.) can help you determine the type of website. Typical domain extensions have:
- .com—Business and commercial
- .edu—Educational institutions
- .org—Nonprofit and community organizations
- .gov—Government sites
- .net—Informational
- .biz—Business
- .us—Company based in the USA
There are many other domain extensions than those listed above, and with recent changes, you can expect to see many more, but these are still the most common.
You should know that anyone can buy any domain name except a .gov domain. Any scammer can buy, for instance, a domain that is one letter off from a real domain and sit and wait for someone to misspell the name and land on his site. It’s called site squatting and claims many victims every year. Check your spelling!
The screenshots below illustrate the difference between two similar URLs and the importance of checking your address. The first is whitehouse.gov; the second is whitehouse.com. Only the domain extensions differ, but the sites are not the same. Only real government agencies can have a .gov address. (The illustration is likely different by now. Both sites change often.)
Pages and website contents
A website is a collection of web pages and web assets like pictures, graphs, and videos. Each page and resource has an address appended to the end of the website’s name after a slash, as in website.com/page. Please take a look at the URL of this page and see how it has a domain followed by a schema that identifies this individual page.
Subdomains
You may also encounter a URL with a subdomain like support.apple.com. The correct web address apple.com is still there; the support is a subdomain name. Subdomains are frequently used for large sections of a website that provide support functions or a division within a company or organization. For instance, the Oasis Institute’s main website is oasisnet.org, and the Connections Technology program website is set up as a subdomain at connections.oasisnet.org. A subdomain always retains the full website name with a dot (period) between the subdomain and domain names.
Everything on the web has a unique address. Try it. Right-click a picture and select Open link in new tab. You’ll see the image on its own URL.
Summary
It is essential to become familiar with the architecture of URLs because scammers use misspelled website names and similar-looking websites to trap victims. For instance, Chase Bank’s website is chase.com (https://chase.com in full). Scammers have used chaseonline.com and chasebank.com and other similar variations that look somewhat legitimate. Scammers use variations of all major websites for cybercrime. Always type in the URL, don’t follow links you receive in emails or texts, and double-check them for accuracy.
Spoofed website addresses and misspelled addresses are often used in scams. To learn more about how to protect yourself, check out the lesson on Website Addresses and Spoofing in our Internet Safety: Your Guide to the Most Important Concepts and Practices of Avoiding Identity Theft and Fraud course.
What is the unique address for a website called, and how is it structured?
A unique address for a website is called a Universal Resource Locator (URL), and it consists of a website name, extension, and sometimes a specific page or resource.
What is site squatting, and how can it be used to scam people?
Site squatting is when scammers buy a domain name that is similar to a real domain, and then wait for people to misspell the name and land on their site. This can be used to trick people into visiting dangerous or fraudulent websites.
How can you protect yourself from spoofed website addresses and misspelled addresses?
You can protect yourself from spoofed website addresses and misspelled addresses by typing in the URL directly, rather than following links in emails or texts, and double-checking the address for accuracy.