Report a phishing domain registered at GoDaddy

Someone registered a domain that imitates yours, and GoDaddy is the registrar. GoDaddy takes abuse reports through web forms, with a separate form for phishing. This guide covers what to put in it and what to do if nothing changes.

If customers have already received fake emails, start with Someone is pretending to be my company. Warning customers and stopping payments come before the takedown.

Step 1: confirm GoDaddy is the registrar

Look the domain up on ICANN Lookup. The RDAP result names the registrar and its abuse contact. For GoDaddy it shows:

Registrar:      GoDaddy.com, LLC
Abuse email:    [email protected]
Abuse phone:    480-624-2505

Then check where the website and mail are hosted, because the registrar and the host are often different companies:

dig +short A examp1e.com
dig +short MX examp1e.com

Look up who owns those IP addresses and report to the host too. If the addresses belong to Cloudflare, see Report a phishing site behind Cloudflare.

Step 2: collect the evidence

GoDaddy's abuse page says phishing reports need the full domain path: the complete URL of the fake page, such as https://examp1e.com/login, not just the domain. It also notes the site must be live and contain a login area. Report while the page is up, and save proof in case it moves:

Screenshots of the fake page, with the date and the address bar visible.
The phishing email with full headers. In Outlook: File > Properties > Internet headers. In Gmail: More > Show original.
Your real website, so the reviewer can compare.
How it impersonates you: copied logo, your company name, a fake login for your customer portal, invoices with your details.
Where you saw it: country, and whether on a phone or a computer.

Step 3: fill in the phishing form

Use GoDaddy's phishing form at legalportal.godaddy.com/abuse/phishing. It asks for:

Your email address.
Company or brand being impersonated: your company name.
URL, website or domain: the full URLs, one per line or separated by commas.
Whether you viewed it on a mobile device, and which country you viewed it from.

Description of issue. The form suggests including a copy of the phishing email with full headers, the official website being impersonated, or a detailed description. Paste the headers as text and describe the impact plainly:

examp1e.com (registered 2026-10-21) imitates our domain example.com.
https://examp1e.com/login copies our customer portal login.
Since 2026-10-24 the domain has sent emails as our company asking
customers to pay invoices to a new bank account. Full headers below.

A good-faith confirmation.

The form has a Check Status link for following a submitted report.

If it's email fraud with no website

GoDaddy's phishing category describes a site that pretends to be another site to steal login or personal information. For a lookalike that only sends fake invoices, email the registrar's abuse contact from RDAP ([email protected]) with the full headers and an explanation, and report to the mail host shown by the MX records. GoDaddy's abuse page sends plain spam complaints to the US Federal Trade Commission, so describe it as fraud and impersonation, which it is.

What to expect

GoDaddy says it can't guarantee any particular outcome, will contact you only if necessary, and doesn't send updates on the evaluation or result. Reports from the same email address within 24 hours don't generate another receipt. The page gives no response time.

So check the domain yourself: if the page goes offline or the domain stops resolving, someone has acted on it.

If nothing happens

Report to the blocklists: Google Safe Browsing and Microsoft. Browsers then warn visitors even before a takedown.
Complain to ICANN. Since 5 April 2024, ICANN-accredited registrars must promptly take reasonable action once they have actionable evidence of DNS abuse, which includes phishing. If a registrar doesn't investigate or respond, file an "Abuse/DNS Abuse (Registrar)" complaint with ICANN Contractual Compliance. ICANN has no compliance authority over country-code domains.
Contact the registry. For generic top-level domains, the registry must at least refer actionable DNS abuse to the registrar or act directly.
UDRP, if you hold a trademark and the domain keeps being used. GoDaddy lists [email protected] for domain disputes, and points to ICANN's UDRP process. See How to report a lookalike domain.

Registered somewhere else? See the guides for Namecheap and Cloudflare.

Check your domain

The free scan lists registered lookalikes of your domain, when they were registered and which have mail servers. The lookalike domain checker runs that check on its own.