A new phenomenon that we’re noticing lately is that a user with a username “JoomlaSupport” is registering automatically on Joomla sites that allow user registration.
Once that user registers, the owner of the Joomla website is contacted by a shady company, (surprisingly) called “JoomlaSupport”, pretending to be Joomla’s Official Support and telling him that his website is hacked and that he needs to give them full access to fix the problem (for money, of course!).
This is a scam! Do not even reply to their email!
The problem is, some Joomla website owners will probably fall for these deceptive and scammy techniques and will most likely pay that shady company a lot of money for doing absolutely nothing. Not only that, we’re sure that this company will contact those deceived owners again, and again, and again, to extort more money from them.
So, what can one do to avoid being scammed?
Well, first of all, ignore any “official” email from Joomla – Joomla will never send emails to those using the Joomla CMS. In fact, Joomla doesn’t even know the emails of Joomla administrators/website owners out there. If you ever receive an email pretending to be from Joomla, then you should rest assured that that email is a scam.
But, how did the JoomlaSupport user registered in the first place?
By default, Joomla websites allow user registration, and that’s how any user (or any script) can register to the website, even if the website doesn’t have a registration form. Joomla administrators must disable user registration if they’re no using it, we have explained how to do this, in details, here.
If your website has received an unwelcome email from “JoomlaSupport”, then you can safely ignore it, it really is nothing more than a scam. If you want help on your Joomla website, then please contact us, and we’ll be more than happy to work with you! Please note that our super affordable fees apply.