My understanding is that's not the purpose of the obfuscation. The parties doing this don't generally want to hack users or compromise accounts, they want people to go to their site instead of the more recognizable one.

If they start actively phishing users this way they're solidly in illegal hacking territory on a pretty massive scale. What they're currently doing is "only" a "growth hack" to get more people on their site instead of the competitor's site.