Website Support Blog

Scammers Targeting Website Customers

We have recently received reports that a company who has previously attempted to scam our customers is once again trying to fool users into paying for unnecessary or non-existent website services, or attempting to get users to switch to their website company.

The company, which has posed under several different names including Dream Real Solutions and The Tech Department, is contacting website customers via phone or email with a message similar to the one below:

"Our records indicate that you have missed your last appointment with us, and efforts to contact you by phone have been unsuccessful. There are mandatory updates for your website that need to be discussed urgently. Being that this is a time sensitive matter, please contact us immediately to schedule another appointment. We care about the success of your online business."

If you've received a call or email of this nature, we would appreciate any information you can provide to us as it helps us gather evidence against these types of scams. Please contact us at [email protected] or submit a support ticket with any details you may have. 

Important Information About Email Notifications From Your Website

Several popular free email providers, including Yahoo! and AOL, have recently changed some of their policies regarding mail delivery, and it may affect the delivery of email notifications (such as order notifications) from your website.

Many email providers use a technical specification called DMARC ("Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance") to help reduce email-based abuse like the sending of forged/spoofed spam email. DMARC is used by receiving inboxes and is checked when an email has a 'from' address that doesn't match the actual sender server address.

In terms of the impact of this change for our customers, our notification emails are sent using the outgoing server of our email provider, but will appear to be from whichever email address you provide (such as [email protected]). As per the new DMARC policies, these emails will now be rejected automatically.

This also affects forwarding of email messages received from Yahoo! and AOL addresses. Because forwarding changes the outgoing mail server, the message will not be received by the forward address because the sender no longer matches the sender's mail server.

For this reason, we now recommend that you use an email address that matches your domain name when sending email notifications. If your web host includes email addresses, you can create an email address by navigating to Edit Site > Domain & Email > Email. 

HOW TO UPDATE YOUR SENDER EMAIL ADDRESSES

To edit the sender email address for order notifications, navigate to Edit Store > Shopping Cart and visit the 'Settings' page on the left.

To edit the sender email address for feedback form notifications, edit the feedback form page and visit the 'Options' page on the left.

To edit the sender email address for autoresponders, edit the autoresponder page and visit the 'Auto-Response Email' page on the left.

If you have any questions about DMARC or email notifications, please contact our support team.

 

Heartbleed Bug Does Not Affect Our Websites

We wanted to reassure all our customers that the heartbleed bug does not affect our website builder. We do not use OpenSSL.

For a list of major companies that were left vulnerable by the heartbleed bug and for more information on this bug, please see this link to Mashable's Heartbleed Hit List.