We have seen a large increase in emails being sent to our customers that claim to be from us, offering an upgrade or warning of security concerns, messages placed on hold, or disabling old accounts, with new variations of the email appearing frequently. The email calls for the recipient to to click on a link to fix the problem, at which point they will be asked to log in.

These are fraudulent attempts by third parties to get access to your username and password, in a process called phishing. These credentials can then be used by spammers to log into your account and send spam messages. If you receive an email like this, please do not try to log into any website linked to in the email. Instead, just delete the email, or forward it to antispam392@socket.net to report it to our spam filters.

It may be difficult in some cases to determine if the message is real.
Some of these messages are written in broken English or contain numerous spelling errors, or the links may point to websites we don't operate, but others look reasonably written, may include our logo and signature, and may obscure the real website being accessed. If you receive an email like this that you are unsure of the legitimacy of, you can forward it to support@socket.net or call us at 1-800-SOCKET-3 to get confirmation.

If you have entered your password into a similar site in the past, you should change your password immediately to protect your account. Again, you can call us at 1-800-SOCKET-3 if you need assistance with this.

In general, if you receive an unsolicited email asking you to log into a website, it's best to skip the link and navigate to the site in your browser yourself. You can also verify that the website you are trying to access is legitimate by checking the address bar to make sure it is pointing to the expected site and check the padlock icon in your browser to make sure the website has been signed by them.