BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) security officials were on Wednesday investigating a bogus website which appeared to offer special CARICOM visas for the 2007 Cricket World Cup to be staged in the Caribbean.

The fake site's address is similar to the real site - www.caricomimpacs.org - which is operated by the region's national security coordinator, the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS).

The IMPACS site offers an online-payment mechanism for foreign travellers to obtain CARICOM visas in addition to other information on the region's crime and security initiatives.

The fake site is on the World Wide Web at caricomimpacs.com and differs only from the authentic site by the commercial domain name.

'Typo-squatter'

Known to web experts as a 'typo-squatter', caricomimpacs.com appears to be a crude search engine with links to other commercial sites but officials told the Caribbean Media Corporation they were seeking to have the site blocked and acquire additional domain names to prevent users from exploiting name similarity to generate web-user traffic.

Internet users entering the keywords 'CARICOM visa' were being directed to the fake site by various search engines.

A common visa policy will come into force on January 15 and will be in effect until May 15 in order to create a single domestic space for foreign travellers entering CARICOM for the cricket tournament.

The Cricket World Cup, the third-largest sporting event after the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, is to be held for the first time in the West Indies from March 5 to April 28.