How to report a phishing site to GoDaddy Hosting

How to reach them

• Give the full URL of the phishing page
• GoDaddy acts on phishing sites that are live and contain a login area
• You will not get updates on the outcome

Reporting to GoDaddy Hosting, step by step

1. Check the host first. A godaddysites.com address is GoDaddy's builder; for any other domain, run it through acidtool.com, as GoDaddy recommends, and see whether GoDaddy comes back as the hosting provider.
2. For a fake login or payment page, open GoDaddy's phishing form at legalportal.godaddy.com/abuse/phishing. No GoDaddy account is needed.
3. Paste the exact page address into "URL, Website, or Domain". If the scam has several pages on the same GoDaddy site, list each one on its own line or separate them with commas.
4. Name the company or brand the page copies, add your email, and say whether you saw it on a phone and from which country, so GoDaddy's team can load the same version you saw.
5. Use the "Description of Issue" box to explain what the page does, for example that it asks for bank card details. Tick the good-faith statement and press "Send Report".
6. For harmful hosted content that is not phishing, such as pages exposing someone's card or ID numbers, GoDaddy's help page sends you to its "Public Safety and Illegal Content" form at legalportal.godaddy.com/abuse/other instead.

What GoDaddy Hosting asks you to include

• The address of the live page itself, in GoDaddy's style http://coolexample.com/phishing. GoDaddy says the site must be up and must contain a login area for its phishing route.
• Anything that lets GoDaddy reproduce what you saw: GoDaddy mentions a proxy or a login that is needed to reach the content.
• If the link came by email, the full email headers and the message body. GoDaddy says headers help it confirm where the message came from.
• For scam shops or impersonation, a description of who is being targeted and any security scan results showing the malicious behaviour.

What GoDaddy Hosting can do

• GoDaddy's Trust and Safety team can investigate content that sits on GoDaddy's own hosting and builder products, and GoDaddy says it acts on complaints where appropriate.
• GoDaddy's hosting accounts have a "Suspended" status. GoDaddy says that when it suspends a hosting account for a reason other than an unpaid balance, it emails the account holder the reason and the steps to reinstate it.
• GoDaddy reserves the right to show your complaint to its customer to back up the abuse claim.

What GoDaddy Hosting cannot do

• GoDaddy says that if it does not host the reported content, it cannot take action on that content, even when the domain is registered with GoDaddy.
• GoDaddy's phishing route expects a live page with a login area, so it is not the right form for a site that has already gone offline.
• GoDaddy will not judge whether a hosted site breaks the law; it asks you to involve your local police and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (ic3.gov) and says it will answer lawful requests from them.
• GoDaddy does not promise to tell you whether the site was taken down.

What happens after you report

• GoDaddy says it reviews every complaint for merit but only gets in touch with you if it needs more detail.
• You will not hear the outcome from GoDaddy. To follow progress, use the Case ID in your receipt email on the Check Report Status page at legalportal.godaddy.com/abuse/status.
• If the page stays up, GoDaddy's advice is to file a new report with more detail, such as the email headers or the access steps, rather than resending the same one.

Write the report

Paste the link, phone number or email address and we'll write the message for GoDaddy Hosting. You send it yourself.

Is the domain also registered with GoDaddy?

This page is about content on GoDaddy Hosting's servers. If the domain name itself is registered with GoDaddy (the Registrar line in a WHOIS lookup shows it), the registrar route is the one that can suspend the name. Report to both when the same company does both jobs.

Not sure who hosts the site?

Scan it: we'll identify the host and registrar and give you the routes that apply.