EDUCATIONAL TOOL

See the domain your eyes can miss.

Explore Unicode lookalikes, punycode, character substitutions and misleading subdomains. Generated examples are displayed as text and are never clickable.

LOOKALIKE DETECTOR

Type a domain. Watch it get impersonated.

These are the substitutions attackers actually use. Every variant below is generated in your browser from what you type: none of them are registered, and HIP does not create them.

nоrthgаtе-bаnk.com CRITICAL

Cyrillic homoglyph

One or more letters replaced with identical-looking Cyrillic characters. Visually indistinguishable in almost every font.

              browser sees: xn--nrthgt-bnk-3qid6dxg.com

northgatebank.com HIGH

Hyphen manipulation

The hyphen is simply dropped. Most people never notice its absence.

northgate-bank.com.secure-login.net CRITICAL

Subdomain deception

The real domain here is secure-login.net. Everything before it is decoration, but a phone shows only the left-hand side.

northgate-bank.co MEDIUM

Top-level domain swap

A single missing character. Typing it is a common slip, and the page can be a pixel-perfect copy.

noorthgate-bank.com MEDIUM

Doubled character

A repeated letter survives a quick glance and matches a very common typing error.

HIP checks every one of these patterns against the domain you are actually on, and flags a mismatch between the brand a page claims and the domain serving it.

Patterns a lookalike domain checker can reveal

Typosquatting and substitution

Missing letters, added words, digit swaps and combinations such as rn that can resemble another character.

Unicode and punycode

Internationalized labels can contain characters from another script. The xn-- form helps expose how the browser encodes them.

TLDs and subdomains

A familiar brand in the left side of an address does not control the registrable domain, and a swapped ending can lead somewhere else.

A visual match is a reason to slow down, not proof of abuse. For evidence beyond the address itself, use the full scanner.

Check a real link safely