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Reading the address on the screen
A printed address has three parts, and only one of them says who owns the page. This guide shows where that part sits, why the address often jumps to a differently named page of the same company, and the six shapes a look-alike takes.
Every address in this guide is short because a person is expected to type it. Short addresses are also easy to imitate, and the imitations rely on one weakness in how people read: the eye finds the familiar word and stops. Reading an address properly means reading it from the right.
The owner’s name sits before the dot
In roku.com/link the owner is roku; in DisneyPlus.com/begin it is disneyplus; in yt.be/activate it is yt, a name Google registered for YouTube. The word after the slash — link, begin, activate, tv2 — is a page within the owner’s site and carries no information about ownership. Any address that moves the service’s name after the slash, or joins it to another word with a hyphen, has a different owner.
Capitalisation in the owner’s name is decoration. DisneyPlus.com and HBOMax.com are printed with capitals on the screen because the companies prefer it; a browser treats disneyplus.com and hbomax.com as the same names. The page part after the slash can be case-sensitive on some sites, which is one reason the services keep it to a single lower-case word.
Why the page often has a different name
Typed into a browser, most of the printed addresses do not stay where they are. They forward to the company’s account or sign-in host: roku.com/link turns into my.roku.com/link; yt.be/activate into a Google Accounts page; HBOMax.com/signin into auth.hbomax.com/link. The table below records what each address opened as when it was read for this guide.
The jump is expected, and the way to check it is the same rule read from the right. my.roku.com ends in roku.com; auth.hbomax.com ends in hbomax.com; accounts.google.com ends in google.com, and Google is YouTube’s owner. A label in front of a genuine owner’s name is still that owner. The dangerous shape is the mirror image — a genuine name in front of someone else’s — and the spotter below shows both.
| Printed on the screen | Opens as | Owner’s name |
|---|---|---|
| roku.com/link | my.roku.com/link | roku.com |
| yt.be/activate · youtube.com/activate | accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/device/usercode | google.com (also youtube.com, yt.be) |
| amazon.com/mytv · primevideo.com/mytv · amazon.com/code | amazon.com/ap/signin (country sites such as amazon.co.uk for /mytv) | amazon.com, primevideo.com |
| netflix.com/tv2 · netflix.com/atv | netflix.com/tv2 (no jump) | netflix.com |
| link.apple.com | link.apple.com (activate.apple.com shows the same page) | apple.com |
| DisneyPlus.com/begin | a code page on disneyplus.com (the sign-in follows) | disneyplus.com |
| hulu.com/activate | the devices section of hulu.com/account (US only) | hulu.com |
| HBOMax.com/signin | auth.hbomax.com/link | hbomax.com |
| peacocktv.com/tv | peacocktv.com/tv, headed Activate Your Device (US only) | peacocktv.com |
| paramountplus.com/roku and ten sister addresses | the same page, one per device family | paramountplus.com |
Six shapes, read from the right
The examples below use reserved names (.example) that cannot be registered by anyone, so that no real page is named. Each pattern is one the reader will meet in search results and advertisements.
The owner’s name is the last thing before the top-level domain, and the printed word after the slash is only a page. Every address in the table above has this shape, whatever it opens as.
Joining the service name to the path with a hyphen makes a new name. roku-link is not roku; it is a separate registration that happens to contain the letters. The same is true of hulu-activate, disneyplus-begin and youtube-activate.
An address can begin with the genuine name and still belong to someone else, because names are read from the right. In roku.com.linkcode.example the owner is linkcode.example; the roku.com at the front is a label the owner chose.
The reverse case is expected and harmless. my.roku.com, auth.hbomax.com, link.apple.com and accounts.google.com are all labels in front of a genuine owner’s name, and the owner is what is read on the right.
Some pages put the service where the path goes: a generic name, then /roku or /hbomax. The owner is the generic name. This shape is the mirror image of the genuine one and is the easiest to misread on a small screen.
An address can be genuine and still not work. hbomax.com/tvsignin belongs to HBO Max and, read live, opens an HBO Max page saying the link is not working; the current printed address is HBOMax.com/signin. A retired address is a sign that the page repeating it is old, not that the owner has changed.
What a look-alike adds
Beyond the name, look-alike pages give themselves away by what they contain. The genuine pages in this guide are almost empty: a heading, a field, a button, sometimes a sign-in. A look-alike has to earn money from the visit, so it adds things.
| Added element | What it is for | On the genuine page |
|---|---|---|
| A fee to activate | Collecting a payment for something that is free | Absent; Roku says it has never charged to activate a device |
| A telephone number | Moving the viewer to a call where remote access and payment can be requested | Absent; a field and a button |
| A chat box | The same, in text | Absent |
| A program to run | Putting remote-control software on the computer | Absent; nothing is put on a computer to enter a code |
| A card field beside the code | Taking card details under the name of verification | Absent; payment methods are asked for only inside account creation and charged only for purchases |
| A lifetime plan or protection plan | A recurring charge for nothing | Absent; Roku’s warning names this pattern |
Search results, advertisements and the printed address
A viewer who searches for a printed address instead of typing it is handing the decision to a results page, and Roku’s own warning to its customers says why that is a poor idea: impostor pages can sit at the top because their operators pay for advertising. A search result’s position, its wording and its use of a familiar name are all things anyone can buy. The name before the top-level domain in its address is the only part that is not for sale.
The address on the TV is the instruction. Typed as printed, it opens the company that printed it — and if it opens an error page, as hbomax.com/tvsignin now does, that too is the company speaking.