Two of my clients received emails over the weekend that claimed to be from the companies that their domains are registered through. Both emails prompted the client to click a link in the email to login and confirm their contact details. The actual links were to bogus sites, looking exactly like the site of a legit company, where when you log in it captures your details for use by them at a later date.
One of the emails purported to be from enom.com, a legitamate company that maintains domain registration details, saying that someone had made a complaint that the contact details for the domain were incorrect.
The other email said they were from Network Solutions, a large domain registrar, and that the clients domain was due for cancellation due to non-payment.
They get a lot of people with these messages because many people forget who their domains are registered with and when their renewal dates are. Luckily both clients thought to check with me before taking any action themselves.
If you get an email asking you to click a link to login and confirm or update your details, you need to be certain that you are clicking a legitmate link. It may say www.legitimatesite.com but, even a beginning webmaster could make that bit of text actually link to www.legitimatesite.com.scamartist.biz and you may be none the wiser.
Go to the legitimate site yourself by typing the correct web address in your browser and see if there is any notice of ‘phishing’ emails being reported or if the email may be legitimate.
PayPal has been a major target of these sorts of phishing emails in the past, which brought his sort of scam to the attention of many internet users — the hard way, unfortunately.
When in doubt, look for help, either on the internet or from your friendly webmaster!