10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising transmitting a different notification that indicates that the universal resource locator is associated with phishing if the encoded distance is determined to exceed the threshold value.
9. A method for detecting potential phishing, the method comprising: selecting a first character of a hostname of a universal resource locator; determining an encoded distance between the first character of the hostname of the universal resource locator and a next character of the hostname of the universal resource locator, wherein the encoded distance is an integral distance between the first character and the next character in a machine encoding; comparing the encoded distance to a threshold value; adding the encoded distance to a hostname distance if the encoded distance is determined not to exceed the threshold value based on comparing the encoded distance to the threshold value; determining if the hostname distance exceeds a threshold hostname distance value; and transmitting a notification that indicates that the universal resource locator is associated with phishing if the hostname distance is determined to exceed the threshold hostname distance value.