Case in point: When Daimler and Chrysler merged, they had a law firm (with no other ties to either company) register the DaimlerChrysler domains weeks before the merger was made public.
I don’t recall if anybody noticed before they went public, but as this thread shows, today it would be noticed for sure.
One of the earlier seasons of Survivor had the winner leaked because of something similar.
Their website had bios of every player, with a <playername>.jpg headshot. As they were voted out, their headshot was replaced with <playername>_eliminated.jpg.
As soon as someone realized that, they entered in every player's name with _eliminated.jpg. One player had a 404 for that file.
I don’t recall if anybody noticed before they went public, but as this thread shows, today it would be noticed for sure.