Scam Alert: “Your Wix website is being shut down”

We’ve had a few clients forward on a rather dramatic email this week – and it’s not the first time!

It is, however, the first time they have sent the same email to us – pretending to be me. And to clients who are not even on Wix telling them their Wix website is about to shut down.

Absolute morons.

But before we get into the detail of how to spot these charlatans and ensure you stay safe, we have to be serious and let you know:

We have NOT been hacked

What’s actually happened is far less dramatic (and unfortunately very common): they have simply looked through our rather wonderful Portfolio and contacted our clients from there – and that’s why they included us, because our site is on there too!

It is also important to note that there is not a person sitting there doing this manually – they are scraping information from publicly visible websites using bots. And this makes it even more difficult to deal with.

The email doing the rounds

You’ll see the screenshot below with my snarky annotations all over it, but the gist is:

“I just got a call from Wix Support… your website hasn’t complied… must be updated before April 17th or it may be shut down…”

What a load of bollocks.

But here's the actual email so you can see just how annoying these things are:

3 quick ways to tell it’s a scam

If you only remember one bit from this post, make it this:

1. It creates panic out of nowhere - “Do this NOW or your website will be shut down”. Legitimate platforms don’t operate like this. Ever. And neither do we! We always give context, explanation, and actual detail.

2. It’s vague as hell - No mention of your actual website (noticed that?), what specifically is wrong other than “unable to detect a valid template license of your website” which isn’t even a thing on Wix!

3. It doesn’t sound like us – come on, since when have we ever sent an email staring with “Hi Dear”. If we’ve worked with you, you’ll know that we talk in plain English, never sell SEO as a random mention, and always explain jargon.

Please do NOT reply (seriously)

Three clients that we know of replied - because despite all of our constant warnings, the urgency of this made it looked convincing, and having my face there doesn’t help either!

The scammer then doubled down and sent a completely fake website performance screenshot to try and prove their site needs work.

We checked it against the real data…

Total fiction.

Do not reply

Do not click anything

Do not send any information or payment

Replying just tells them your email is active - and they’ll keep coming!

What you should do instead

Nice and simple:

✔ Mark it as spam

✔ Forward it to us if you want a second opinion

✔ Delete the email

We’d always rather you check than worry (or worse, get caught out by these bastards).

The bottom line

YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT ABOUT TO BE SHUT DOWN!

There is no secret Wix (or any other platform) compliance crackdown.

And Web Goddess is definitely not emailing you like that.

So what now?

Honestly?

Ignore it. Delete it. Carry on.

And if you ever do need updates, SEO, or support - you’ll hear it from us properly, without the scare tactics, fake certificates, or dodgy Gmail accounts.

Case in point, we’ve just contacted ALL of our clients about Wix upgrading their website forms with links to learn how to update it themselves or letting them know how much it would cost for us to do it for them – and some people still checked this wasn’t a scam. Better safe than sorry!

Final thought: when in doubt, just ask

If something feels off, it probably is.

Drop it over to us and we’ll sanity check it for you - no judgement, no fuss.

Because scammers might be getting bolder…

…but they’re still not that clever.