Here at Insight Hosting we endeavour to stay in touch with registrars around the world so that we can keep up on top of issues affecting our industry. Through this network we have been made aware of a phishing scam, targeting domain name owners.

We feel it is our duty to let you know that these emails (shown below) are NOT being sent from Insight Hosting or any other domain registrar we have been in touch with. These emails are malicious and should be disregarded if received.

In an attempt to bring this situation under control we are already talking to other domain name providers whose customers have been targeted and together we are taking action to try and stop this.

If you are ever unsure about the origin of your emails, we recommend that you check the email headers, here you can view the senders true email address. This will be displayed as the ‘from’ email address. In our own webmail (insighthosting.ie) you don not even need to open the email to see this – simply right-click the sender/subject line and select ‘View Source’.

If you come across an illegitimate sender, we advise that you blacklist the address. Full instructions on how to blacklist email contacts can be found in our Knowledge Base article.

Other common email providers such as Hotmail or Outlook.com, Gmail make their own efforts to tackle scams and protect their customers. If ever you think you have received a phishing email, you should report it to your email provider, we have included instructions below. Reporting these emails lowers the credibility of the senders whole batch of emails and increases the likelihood that their future emails will be sent to spam folders, in some instances they may not deliver at all.

We all play our part in stopping scam emails and here are some of the ways you can do your bit:

Hotmail/Outlook

Highlight the selected email from your inbox and from the top menu select Junk then Phishing scam.

Gmail

Report phishing emails to Gmail at the following web address:

https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse

Yahoo

Report phishing emails to Yahoo at the following web address:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN3402.html

This particular batch of phishing emails are being sent to the registrant email address and the email claims to be from the domain name provider, these details are being pulled from the public WHOIS record for the domain being targeted.

As these details are being scraped from the public WHOIS we feel it’s worth mentioning that your own registrant information can usually be hidden, however, this does depend on the registration type and domain suffix in question.

If you do get an email claiming that a suspension is in place for your domain name because of a violation of an abuse policy:

* DO NOT click any links
* DO NOT reply to the email
* DO NOT call any phone numbers listed within the email

If you have any questions or need clarification all you need to do is contact ou by phone or email.