Phishing Suspension

This support article will run you through the action taken when your account is suspended for phishing abuse or website abuse.

Phishing

Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by tricking website visitors or email viewers into thinking they are using trustworthy communications. Typically it is carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging which direct users to enter personal information at a fake website that matches the look and feel of a legitimate site. If your services have been suspended for phishing we have identified website files that appear to show fake websites on your domain.

Receiving a suspension notification

Once you've been suspended you will receive an email notifying you of the domain, service, date and time and the reason for the suspension. Where possible we will also provide live url examples of the abuse that was found.

To lift the suspension placed on your service, you must reply to the appropriate email and acknowledge the following:

• Take immediate action to prevent the abuse from occurring.
• Make changes to your website to protect it from getting compromised again.
• Your response will be kept on file and may be referred to if the problem reoccurs. Repeat offences will lead to re-suspension and may eventually lead to the termination of the web hosting service.
  Once you've been unsuspended it is up to you to clean your site, you can do this yourself or you can hire a web developer to clean this. It is important to note if you are suspended more than 3 times in a month you risk facing service termination. Our How to deal with a hacked website support article provides guidance on cleaning your site.

Website Security

Website security is a tool you can use to assist you with keeping your site clean and secure. The nature of hackers is that they evolve therefore it is expected that there may be times the website scan does not detect the malicious content because of this the product offers no guarantee for protection against all hacking or abuse. The website security product offers a number of different scans as well as tips on fixing the issues it finds, the services also provides reports about the security of their website.

My site was made with Website Builder

If you have made your website through our website builder and you have been informed that there is abuse showing on your site you can republish your site as a preventative cleaning method.

To do this follow the below steps:

1. Download a local copy of your website files, our Backup your website support article will help you with this.
2. Delete the current website files.
3. Login to your website builder and re-publish your site, our Publish a Website Builder support article will help you with this.

It would also be recommended to change your passwords and ensure they are high strength with a range of characters as well as kept in a secure place. If your site still shows as abusive after re-publishing it, it is possible that this is a deeper level of hacking and will need to be addressed as such. Again, you will need to investigate this yourself or have an experienced web developer work on this.