Vanguard lookalike domains
Greyphish has recorded 165 domains that resemble Vanguard since February 2026, 45 of them in the last 90 days. Most of them (63%) are combosquats: Vanguard spelled correctly with a word added, most often “app”, “service”, “web”. .com carries 68% of them, out of 32 endings in all. The pace has picked up, with 31 in the last 30 days against 6 in the 30 before. The busiest week began 5 October 2026, with 19 new ones. 4 certificates for unregistered .ph, .com.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: app (9), service (4), web (4), claim (3).
Lookalikes per week
Show as a table
| Week of | Typo | Combo | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-20 | 5 | 4 | 9 |
| 2026-04-27 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2026-05-04 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 2026-05-11 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026-05-18 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 2026-05-25 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 2026-06-01 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| 2026-06-08 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026-06-15 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| 2026-06-22 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| 2026-06-29 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 2026-07-06 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2026-07-13 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 2026-07-20 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026-07-27 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2026-08-03 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 2026-08-10 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 2026-08-17 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026-08-24 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 2026-08-31 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026-09-07 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 2026-09-14 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2026-09-21 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026-09-28 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| 2026-10-05 | 1 | 18 | 19 |
| 2026-10-12 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
Endings
The 8 most used of the 32 top-level domains these lookalikes sit under.
| Ending | Lookalikes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| .com | 113 | 68.5% |
| .co.uk | 6 | 3.6% |
| .org | 6 | 3.6% |
| .cfd | 5 | 3.0% |
| .io | 3 | 1.8% |
| .xyz | 3 | 1.8% |
| .net | 2 | 1.2% |
| .online | 2 | 1.2% |
Where they are registered
For the 112 with a registrar in WHOIS (68% 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 | 22 | 19.6% | Retail |
| NameBright | 11 | 9.8% | Retail |
| Namecheap | 9 | 8.0% | Retail |
| Media Elite Holdings | 8 | 7.1% | Retail |
| Squarespace | 5 | 4.5% | Retail |
| Above.com | 4 | 3.6% | Retail |
| Cloudflare | 4 | 3.6% | Retail |
| Dynadot | 4 | 3.6% | Retail |
What the live ones do
35 of these lookalikes were registered and checked for a website and mail: 21 (60%) served a website and 21 (60%) 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 18 live ones checked against it (0%).
23 were tracked while live and 0 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 Vanguard; it is not necessarily malicious, and none of these is a claim about who registered it or why.
vanguardservicenj[.]orgCombo, Oct 14Not checkedvanguardappliances[.]comCombo, Oct 13No site or mail when checkedvanguardservices[.]xyzCombo, Oct 13No site or mail when checkedvanguardrenewableagriculture[.]comCombo, Oct 12No site or mail when checkedvanguardrecovery[.]co[.]nzCombo, Oct 11Not checkedvanguardsupportedhousing[.]ukCombo, Oct 10Serves a websiteMX recordsvanguardapparel[.]comCombo, Oct 10No site or mail when checkedvanguardapplied[.]comCombo, Oct 10Serves a websiteMX recordsvanguardsecuresystems[.]comCombo, Oct 9MX recordsvanguardwebco[.]comCombo, Oct 9Serves a website
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 Vanguard. Domains listed resemble Vanguard 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.