Problem is, the email isn’t coming from the webmail administrator or your good friends at Hover, it is coming from a scammer who is trying to get your email username and password so that they can hijack it and send out spam, or worse, use it as the first step to accessing your credit card or bank accounts.

here is a sample of a recent example that I received:

Some things to note about the email:

1) It didn’t come from Hover! We always send out email under our real names and company information. We don’t hide behind generic addresses or terms like “Web mail administrator”. You will always get email from a real person that works here.

2) We would never ask you for these kinds of details in an email message. We already know who you are, what your passwords are and so on. The scammers don’t, which is why they are asking!

3) We would never do any work on our system and not post details about it to our Help center. Its always a good idea to check in and see what we’ve going, but especially if you ever get an email like this one!

4) Our customers pay us for their service, we would never delete any account that a customer had paid for, even if it was unused.

5) The email doesn’t mention Tucows or Hover anywhere. We would never hide our company affiliation like this!

There are other tip-offs as well – we have legal requirements that govern what we can and can’t say in a message like this, and other items as well. However, the simplest way to find out if a message like this is legitimate is to simply forward it to “help@hover.com” and ask us! You can call us at 1-866-731-6556 as well.

It is always better to be safe than sorry. Don’t fall prey to these scams. Once someone has access to your email address, they are often able to get quick access to your other online accounts like your banking and work accounts – which never turns out well. Do your best to protect your email address!

This post won’t quite fulfill the stated promise of the blog since I am going to talk about a service we offer.  But I can’t help it.  There are myths that need to be dispelled.  Fears that need to be allayed.  Shackles that need to be broken!

I have talked to so many people over the past few months that would love to have a better email address and just can’t seem to do it.  People putting sloppy looking Gmail and Hotmail addresses on resumes.  Actors.  Photographers.  Real estate agents.  I have a friend who manages her SAT tutoring business at something almost exactly like ADF37@aol.com.  (I have altered it slightly to protect her identity from my throng of readers.)  This is her livelihood.  She uses that address in local advertising.  She sends invoices from that address.  She hates it.  But she’s afraid to leave it.

Concern #1

I don’t want to start using a whole new email interface.  (I also don’t want to manage multiple Inboxes.)

You don’t have to!  Completely disconnect an email address from an email interface in your mind.  And nobody ever needs to check more than one Inbox.  We offer Webmail but we barely encourage anyone to use it.  We know there are companies that spend ten times what we spend to develop theirs.  You can get yourself a simple, short, memorable, unique email address and continue to use whatever email program you prefer.   Just forward the email to an existing email address.  Then set up your Outlook, Mac Mail, iPhone, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! or just about anything you use to send your emails out from your new address.  We have wonderful tutorials and videos in our Help section that help you do it.

Concern #2

I don’t want to have to tell everybody that I changed email addresses.

You don’t have to!  You really don’t.  I just did this.  I got a new personal email address and I just started using it as described above.  In my case, I have always forwarded all email to my work Inbox.  People send emails to my old personal email address.  I respond using my new email address.  So anyone new that I reach out to gets my new address.  Anyone who reaches out to me at the old address is getting a response from the new address.  Eventually, anyone I would possibly care about has my new address.  And anyone who doesn’t can still reach me anyway at the old one.

There are plenty of people who are just fine with their generic email address.  That’s cool.  Listen, ultimately it’s about substance, whether you’re socializing, networking or conducting business.  But if you grimace a bit every time you give somebody your email address out loud.  Or you feel like you could use just an ounce of credibility, polish, consistency, recall, humor or anything from a new one, don’t be afraid.  Come on in.  We can help.

There is an event coming up on Monday, November 9.  We’ll be giving away some free email addresses.  If you are in Toronto and you are a girl geek, go to the site and get signed up to join in the fun.

So when we started talking about how we should be blogging at Hover, it came back to me.  We already have a blog (this), we just haven’t really been blogging here.  We’ve offered a few thoughts and opinions that venture beyond our own service.  But mostly we have used it just to communicate Hover product updates and suggestions and maintenance notices.  Those are obviously important, arguably more critical than my memories of vintage cartoons.  Those sort of posts will continue to live here, mixed together with the bloggier sort of posts, until we decide that it would be better to formally separate them.  But for now…

Poof, we’re a blog.

So what will we blog about?  I direct you to the little “About This Blog” essay to the right.  I’ll wait for you to come back….

That’s it.  We want to be helpful.  We want to share what we love on the Internet.  We have people here (like me, Michael Goldstein, VP of Marketing) who just started tweeting a couple of months ago.  (I’m @mickgoldstein.  I rarely say anything very valuable.)  People (like me) who are still figuring out the best ways to share photos and videos of our kids with their grandparents.  We have hard core geeks.  We have people helping to shape Internet policies and protocols.  We have social media celebrities.  We have people with tons of experience launching and promoting very small businesses.  And we are willing to go out and find other people to write about what interests you.  Hover, the service, is meant to foster greater value and enjoyment in your Internet experience.  This blog should do the same.

I hope that sounds like something you’d want to check in on.  Please do.  And please tell us what you might want to hear from us – reviews of online services in a particular area, thoughts on building a Web presence for you, your business or your family, explanations of domain name or Internet policies, anything.  We’d love to hear from you.

Poof, you’re a participant!

I will post again soon.

For the geeks out there like myself, BOSS is a REST API that lets you build your own search engine off the Yahoo index. It will send you back the results in either XML or JSON, much like the Hover API.  That leaves it completely up to you on how you want to sort, filter and display the information.

With some help from Screensteps, where we store all of our great documentation, we have also updated the Tutorials to have more recognizable addresses like: “http://help.hover.com/tutorials/hover/manual/281/2287-renewing-hover-services/” instead of “http://help.hover.com/Tutorials?space_id=365&manual_id=281&lesson_id=2287“.  This makes it easier for you to read and, along with other search optimizations, makes it easier for the search engine to return better results for you.

This update is all about making sure the answers to your questions are even closer at hand.

1. Click on your Account Tab from your Hover Admin (https://www.hover.com/login)

2. Click on the “+” symbol to the right of the page ( a new section will open)

3. Now click on the blue hyperlinked date for any order

4. This will reveal our new print receipt page.

For business and personal accounts, the addition of this feature will certainly help.

We definitely accomplished this, but in the process, we also made the signin process a lot more difficult for the good guys – our customers – as well.

So, based on all your feedback, we’ve turned off the feature until we can figure out a less disruptive way of offering this level of security. We’d really appreciate any thoughts or ideas that you might have about how we can best tackle this problem.

Thanks for your patience while we worked this out. We’re sorry if we caused anyone any serious inconvenience!

This will not only ensure the continued safety and security of your domain names and personal information, but will also make it easier for us to manage our back-end systems.

“Batman once said, ‘ If only they would use their genius for good instead of evil! ‘ While Internet fraudsters will never stop finding new ways to use cyberspace to victimize, we now have methods to prevent their crimes rather than just trying to investigate after the fact.”

To find out more about this, and how to avoid inputting the captcha everytime you login (remember you never have to logout), please review our FAQ found here: http://about.hover.com/captcha