

Ask YC: Anyone know the proper way to report a phishing site? - goodgoblin

Hi - we recently found a website so similar to ours we considered suing for infringement, but upon closer examination it appears to be a phishing site.  Does anyone know the proper way to report something like this?
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dkokelley
I don't think there are any official government agencies that let you report
fraudulent sites to them. Your best bet is to go to the commercial providers
of anti-phishing software (IE, FF and the addons that seek out phishing sites,
etc...) and contact them. I believe many of these have a process for users to
submit their sites.

On a "fight fire with fire" note, see what you can find about this site. Do a
whois lookup (probably won't find much, if they know what they're doing). You
may be able to find their hosting company and contact them directly. Also see
if you can find where the site is hosted geographically. This will give you an
advantage of knowledge should you need to take any legal action (a host in
Utah is easier to fight legally than an off-shore one). I also like the
suggestion about creating a script to bombard their servers with false
registrations - maybe as a last resort thing...but maybe not. :)

Also, would you mind sharing the sites with us (both yours and the bogus one)?
I would personally like to see how this site is trying to phish information
from your visitors.

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noonespecial
Sure. The proper way is to code up a quick ruby script to generate 100,000 or
so bogus form fillouts per hour. It will be gone in no time.

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dkd
you guys are dangerous :P

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xenoterracide
you should report it to the support desk of whomever they are spoofing
(assuming they are indeed faking another site).

if not report it to the web host they are on.

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dkokelley
It was their own site that was being spoofed. Reporting it to themselves won't
help much. :P

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xenoterracide
well reporting it to the person hosting the spoof would help. usually they'll
take it down.

