Help & FAQ
How NameSignal works, what it can and cannot see, and how to reach a human.
Getting started
What do I need to add first?
A brand name and at least one domain you own. The owned domains matter more than they look: without them, your own certificate renewals are reported as lookalikes, and the alerts become noise you learn to ignore.
How long until I see a real alert?
Monitoring starts within about a minute of adding a brand. After that it depends entirely on whether anyone registers a lookalike domain and gets a certificate for it — which might be today or might be months away. An empty dashboard usually means nothing is wrong.
Why are domains shown as example[.]com?
Every suspected domain is defanged and never rendered as a link, in the app or in email. The whole product is about phishing; a one-click path from an alert to a live phishing site would be indefensible.
Plans and alerts
What does the free plan include?
Three suspicious domains, fixed for the life of your account. They stay the same rather than rotating, so you can actually work them — investigate, draft a takedown, and track the case. Paid plans unlock every detected domain.
Why does my dashboard say more domains were found than I can see?
The count is real and the domains are locked. Free accounts see three; the rest are available on Pro or Agency. We show the count because you are entitled to know how much is there.
Can I change which three I can see?
No. If the three could be swapped, a free account would eventually see every domain by waiting — so the grants are permanent. Upgrading unlocks all of them at once.
Existing lookalikes
Will I see anything on my first day?
Yes, if anything is there to see. Shortly after you add a brand, NameSignal searches the historical certificate record for lookalikes that already exist, so the dashboard is not empty while you wait for something new to be issued.
Why are historical findings labelled differently?
Live monitoring reads the certificate logs directly and can account for exactly what it has seen. A historical search goes through a public index instead, which has its own lag and no completeness guarantee. Both are real records; only one supports a coverage claim, so the dashboard keeps them apart.
If the search finds nothing, am I safe?
No. A lookalike that never obtained a certificate leaves no record to find, and the index can be incomplete or briefly unavailable. When a search cannot run, NameSignal reports that it could not look rather than reporting that nothing is there.
What NameSignal cannot see
- Certificate Transparency records certificates, not every domain registration. Domains without a publicly logged certificate may not appear. Separate DNS sweeps check a bounded set of common lookalike names.
- NameSignal polls a configured set of public certificate logs across operators. Coverage is not exhaustive, and upstream outages or recovery work can delay or leave gaps in findings. Check the current coverage status.
- The historical search that runs when a brand is added goes through a public certificate index. It has its own ingestion lag, no completeness guarantee, and is periodically unavailable — a search that cannot run is reported as such, never as a clean result.
- Each lookalike is checked with public registration (RDAP) and DNS records and a text-only read of its page by an isolated scanner: no script runs and nothing is submitted. A site can hide from the scanner or change after it looks, so uncertain ones are re-checked rather than cleared.
- Takedowns are filed only when you ask, one domain at a time, and every report is reviewed against the evidence before it is sent. A registrar is never obliged to act on a report, and NameSignal does not provide legal advice.
Contact
Support: support@namesignal.net. We do not currently offer a contractual response time.
Security reports: security@namesignal.net. Please give us a reasonable window to fix an issue before disclosing it.
NameSignal does not provide legal advice. Takedown drafts are a starting point built from public evidence; whether and how to send one is your decision.