Name.com Blog
January 15, 2015

Something Phishy: How to spot phishing scams

One of the many reasons that our customers are the best in the world is that they contact us whenever something doesn’t seem right. That’s how we found out that a bunch of weasels (or perhaps a lone weasel) were sending fake Name.com emails to phish personal information. Not cool.


don't be a phishing victim

One of the many reasons that our customers are the best in the world is that they contact us whenever something doesn’t seem right. That’s how we found out that a bunch of weasels (or perhaps a lone weasel) were sending fake Name.com emails to phish personal information. Not cool.

Below is the email our customer received with some of the telling signs of a spamming scammer:

avoid phishing scams

 

 

Emails from us will either come directly from a person (jared@name.com, ethan@name.com, etc) or one of two addresses: support@name.com or notifications@name.com.

Below is the actual email. They did a pretty good job…with some notable exceptions.

avoid phishing scams email

The Notable Exceptions

1. We’re not going to send you a pretty, formatted email that your name servers are changing. An email like this would come from someone in support and be a direct, all-text response about the issue.

2. That copy in the email, “If you are monitoring this name with Domain Backorders, the above change is also displayed in the “Monitoring and Backordering” section of your account manager” makes no sense. If an email reads like we’re have a stroke, it’s probably not us. Or you should call because we might need medical help.

3. In our emails to you, when you hover over the big green button (or any button) you’ll get the link from which it came. This phishing example originated from:

hxxp://www.name.com.widk.com/~zeteor/Name.com/account/login.php

If it’s from us you’ll get a https://www.name.com/tools/etc without the extra domain extension, which in this case is the widk.com tacked onto the end of the domain.

4. If you’re at all suspicious that an email is not from us, please call and check with our support. The number listed in this phishing email is actually disconnected, which is a good thing because we’d like to call and terrify them.

Here are some other useful tips to avoid being the victim of a phishing attack:

1. Most email services do a good job of filtering spam, so make sure that filter is set up. Our Google Apps Gmail inbox that we use at work is great eliminating most of it.

2. Be careful of anything from an unrecognized sender. Pick up a phone and verify they are who they say they are.

3. Don’t let them freak you out. A common phishing scheme is scaring the recipient with something financial or health related.

4. Don’t click on links, download attachments or download files from unrecognized senders.

5. Never enter personal information into a popup window. Phishers love to send you an imitation web link and once it pops up have you enter your user and password.

6. Try not to share any personal, financial or other private information (LIKE PASSWORDS) in an email, especially to an unrecognized sender.

7. Verify information over the phone only if you initiate the call. They’re scamming old school too.

8.  Make sure any website with which you’re making financial transactions has the “https” instead of only “http.” That “S” is for secure in Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

9. Keep up your defenses with spyware, necessary filters, and updates.

And please let us know if you see anything phishy. We’ll do our best to keep you updated and we’re here to answer any questions you might have.

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