PayPal lookalike domains
Greyphish has recorded 345 domains that resemble PayPal since February 2026, 62 of them in the last 90 days. Most of them (66%) are combosquats: PayPal's name or one of its product names spelled correctly with a word added, most often “support”, “online”, “secure”. .com carries 61% of them, out of 51 endings in all. The pace has slowed, with 14 in the last 30 days against 23 in the 30 before. 396 certificates for unregistered .ph, .com.ph, .net.ph names (registry wildcard) are excluded: the registry answers for any name under those endings, so nobody had to register one to get a certificate for it.
Data as of . Public sources only.
What kind of lookalikes
One or two keystrokes away from the real name: a letter dropped, doubled, swapped or mistyped. More
A letter swapped for one that looks the same, in ASCII or in Unicode written as punycode. More
Words most often added to the name in the last 90 days: support (8), online (6), secure (6), account (5), service (5), casino (4).
Lookalikes per week
Show as a table
| Week of | Typo | Combo | Homoglyph | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-20 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 10 |
| 2026-04-27 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026-05-04 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 8 |
| 2026-05-11 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2026-05-18 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 6 |
| 2026-05-25 | 1 | 11 | 1 | 13 |
| 2026-06-01 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 8 |
| 2026-06-08 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2026-06-15 | 3 | 8 | 0 | 11 |
| 2026-06-22 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026-06-29 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026-07-06 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026-07-13 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026-07-20 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026-07-27 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 9 |
| 2026-08-03 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026-08-10 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 8 |
| 2026-08-17 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2026-08-24 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 11 |
| 2026-08-31 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026-09-07 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| 2026-09-14 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026-09-21 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026-09-28 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026-10-05 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2026-10-12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Endings
The 8 most used of the 51 top-level domains these lookalikes sit under.
| Ending | Lookalikes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| .com | 209 | 60.6% |
| .de | 14 | 4.1% |
| .info | 14 | 4.1% |
| .net | 13 | 3.8% |
| .online | 7 | 2.0% |
| .shop | 6 | 1.7% |
| .top | 6 | 1.7% |
| .ws | 6 | 1.7% |
Where they are registered
For the 206 with a registrar in WHOIS (60% of all). Brand-protection registrars mostly hold defensive registrations made by brands themselves, so a domain there is more likely the brand's own than an imitation.
| Registrar | Lookalikes | Share | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | 24 | 11.7% | Retail |
| Dynadot | 20 | 9.7% | Retail |
| Media Elite Holdings | 18 | 8.7% | Retail |
| Above.com | 15 | 7.3% | Retail |
| Cloudflare | 10 | 4.9% | Retail |
| NameSilo | 9 | 4.4% | Retail |
| PDR | 9 | 4.4% | Retail |
| Squarespace | 8 | 3.9% | Retail |
What the live ones do
40 of these lookalikes were registered and checked for a website and mail: 16 (40%) served a website and 18 (45%) publish MX records, so they can receive email. Checks run on the higher-severity matches that resolve, not on every lookalike.
Google Web Risk lists none of the 8 live ones checked against it.
10 were tracked while live and 2 have since gone down. See what to do about a lookalike.
Recent examples
The 10 most recent, written with [.] so they cannot be clicked. The brand's own domains and registrations held by brand-protection registrars are left out. A lookalike resembles PayPal; it is not necessarily malicious, and none of these is a claim about who registered it or why.
venmoconfirmation[.]comCombo, Oct 8No site or mail when checkedpaypalsupport[.]chatCombo, Oct 8No site or mail when checkedcasino-online-paypal[.]netCombo, Oct 7No site or mail when checkedvenmohelpdeskcom[.]comCombo, Oct 7MX recordspaypalconfirmation[.]coCombo, Oct 7No site or mail when checkedpaypalaccountnotice[.]comCombo, Oct 6MX recordsvenmologinusa[.]comCombo, Oct 4No site or mail when checkedpaypal-verify[.]comCombo, Oct 4MX recordspaypalservice[.]appCombo, Oct 4Not checkedvenmo-alert[.]comCombo, Sep 23MX records
Or watch it free: Greyphish tells you when a new lookalike of your domain is registered or goes live.
Further reading
More in banking and payments
Greyphish is not affiliated with PayPal. Domains listed resemble PayPal by spelling; registration alone says nothing about intent. Counts cover domains first seen in public Certificate Transparency logs and ICANN zone files; domains that Greyphish customers watch are excluded.