Phishing Scams

Phishing web sites are intended to trick you into believing that they are being provided by an established company, with which you may have services. Most phishing sites will disguise themselves into looking exactly the same as the login page for the web site they are trying to impersonate, and by providing your details to this site (usually logon details, or credit/debit Card details), you will actually be providing them to the creator of this web site.

Phishing has become increasingly popular over the last few years, this is mainly due to the ease of doing so, and because of the amount of detail that can easily be imitated. As Phishing web sites are set up completely independent of the company that is being imitated, it is very difficult for legitimate companies to fight this issue. Most web sites have a page dedicated to informing you of their means on contact, so you should be able to work out whether you are being asked a legitimate request.

The majority of phishing attempts are sent via e-mail. On the e-mail you receive, you will be prompted to take some further action, of which usually requires you to enter in your personal details. This may be that you are asked to reply to the e-mail or that you are asked to click the link within the e-mail.

If you receive a message to your Inbox and you are not certain to whether it is legitimate, we would suggest that you consider the following things:

• Have you provided the company in question the e-mail address for the account you are checking?

• Check the e-mail address it has come from, just by looks you can usually tell if something isn't quite right.

• Look at the WHOIS record for the domain name in question, and pay attention to the registered owner, In most cases this will be the company name if the message is legitimate. A good WHOIS lookup web site is https://lookup.icann.org/. Phishing attempts sometimes use numbers instead of letters in addresses, to imitate genuine company domain names (e.g. zeroes instead of the letter 'o'). So, if you are suspicious, take a close look at that domain name!

Usually by now you should have been able to work out whether its real or not, failing this we would suggest that you speak to the company that you believe it could be from and they will be able to tell you for definite.

As the number of phishing attempts have risen over the last few years, the detection of phishing attempts is getting better. The majority of phishing e-mails are badly imitated or are being sent from servers that are black listed (known to send phishing mail), this means that they usually wont make it to your Mailbox or will be put into your Junk Mail folder, however this is not always the case and definitely not something to rely on.

Over the last year or so, most browsers and security suites will also have their own phishing web site detection, this works on a basis that the page will need to have been reported by a user of this software, and then confirmed by the company that provides the service. Although this will alert you if it is a known web site, it again should not be relied upon.

At the current time we are not aware of any phishing attempts imitating messages from Freeola and GetDotted, this is not to say that there aren't any nor that you may not receive one. All required updates for your services should be made through your MyFreeola account, therefore we would have no need to link you to a page to update your details.

If you wish to update your passwords, you can find out how to do so using the Change Password Guide.

If you receive a message from Freeola and GetDotted and are not sure whether it is legitimate, we suggest that you contact us via Support Ticket or by calling our Support Team on the number below.