Some customers are receiving fake invoices sent by companies with misleadingly official-sounding names. If these invoices are paid, they take over your hosting services and charge you massively inflated rates. This can often lead to your website and email being blank at the new provider, as they don't have access to your File Sanctuary accounts.
These companies seem to think it’s perfectly reasonable and ethical to get their customers through these types of practices. It's not a new activity (it has been going on for most of the last decade) but nonetheless it is extremely concerning to see other businesses behave in this manner, and we wanted to make you aware of the problem.
Historically the companies we have seen fake invoices from include The Domain Registry of America (DROA), Domain Registry of Canada (DROC) and lately, DNS Services. The companies deliberately use official-sounding names, though in reality they are not the official registries at all. It should be noted that there are other companies out there behaving this way as well, so this behaviour is not limited to the three companies above.
Below is an example of an invoice, and we've highlighted the information to look out for. For example the disclaimer towards the bottom "NOTE: DNS SERVICES INC. IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH YOUR CURRENT NAME SERVER PROVIDER" coupled with the disclaimer hidden within the summary and the fake DNS record that they want to bill you for.
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We offer WHOIS Contact Privacy on all the TLDs that allow it. This hides your personal details from the WHOIS records associated with your domain name, which makes it more difficult for these sorts of companies to find your contact information.
It is important to note that you will only receive invoices directly from File Sanctuary for any services you have with us. No other companies will invoice you on our behalf. That said, however, if you do receive any invoices like this, please create a support ticket we can investigate, and if necessary, warn other customers.
