**What are they?**

Phishing, pronounced ‘fishing’, is a form of online attack that’s generally aimed at obtaining your personal data or access to your money. Common targets include login credentials or  bank/credit card details, but there are many opportunities fraudsters may want to take advantage of.

These attacks often come in the form of spoofed emails or websites that attempt to disguise themselves as the real deal. 

**How to spot a phishing attack**

Phishing emails often appear to be from legitimate companies like banks, internet service providers or credit card companies. Always check if the full email address or website URL you are interacting with is legitimate by validating it with an external source. 

For example, you bank with Barclays and receive an email redirecting you to their website. Check both the domain you received the email from and the URL you are being redirected to:

* Google their website, in this example, their real UK landing page URL is “[https://www.barclays.co.uk](https://www.barclays.co.uk/)”
* An example of a spoofed version of this might be as similar as "[https://www.brclays.co.uk](https://golightyear.com)”

Both websites might look exactly the same to begin with, but a spoofed attack might be collecting your login credentials. 

If unsure, reach out to the company directly by searching for an alternative contact and verifying that the communication you received is legitimate. When in doubt, it’s always best not to answer any questions, click any links, or download any files.

Some telltale signs of these attacks are:

* First time or infrequent senders
* Poor spelling and/or grammar
* Asking for items like usernames, passwords, or account numbers
* Offer something seemingly valuable, like a prize or discount

**Verifying your details with Lightyear**

As a regulated financial institution, we may occasionally need to reach out if we spot something unusual to make sure your account is safe and secure. 

It’s important to note, we’d _**never**_:

* ask you for things like your login credentials, one-time passcodes sent by SMS, or your bank / credit card information. 
* place any orders for you by phone - only you can do so yourself through our platform
* ask you to deposit funds to different account details than what you see within the Lightyear mobile app

To ensure that you’re speaking with a Lightyear team member and not a fraudster, you can check the handle of the email you’ve received, or ask for a verification message to your device where you have Lightyear installed. Our domain is **golightyear.com** and our support email address is **[support@golightyear.com](mailto:support@golightyear.com)**. 

**Reporting suspicious activity**

If you receive or spot any email, website or phone call impersonating Lightyear, or have concerns about the safety and security of your Lightyear account, please report it immediately to our support team.

Guide to protecting your personal information

Avoiding phishing and other internet scams

See here for updating your details, logging in or managing your preferences.

Managing my Lightyear account

To deactivate your account, please get directly in touch with the Lightyear [support team](mailto:support@golightyear.com).

In accordance with applicable financial regulations, we store submitted personal data and associated account information for at least 5 years after closure.

Please know that we can not deactivate your account unless you have zero balance in cash and instruments – hence you would have to close all your positions and withdraw your funds before deactivation and contacting us.
- The steps to be taken in the app to close your entire existing position: you can tap on “Sell”, choose the selling format “Number of shares” and tap “Sell max”.
- When withdrawing your funds, note that USD bank transfers are not available at the moment. Therefore if your account holds USD, you would have to convert such funds to EUR or GBP before withdrawing. If a currency conversion takes place, please note there is an FX fee of 0.35%.

How can I deactivate my account?

Unfortunately, sometimes things can go wrong and we’re sorry for this. In these instances, we take all complaints seriously and do our best to come to a mutually acceptable resolution. When forwarding a complaint, be sure to include as much information as possible about the issue including:

- when it occurred
- what happened
- your expectations of us to fix it

You can submit your complaint by email directly to our [complaints contact](mailto:complaints@golightyear.com). We kindly ask that only complaints are submitted to our complaints contact, and that if you have a general support query, please contact our [support team](mailto:support@golightyear.com). 

You can read more about what a complaint is and our handling process in our [complaints policy](https://golightyear.com/complaints-policy#introduction).

I want to submit a complaint

To change any personal information like your name, address, email or phone number you’ll need to get in touch with our [support team](mailto:support@golightyear.com). To make changes, we may request a corroborating document from you. For example, if you’ve moved, we’ll require a new proof of address document.

You’ll be able to find more information about documents needed for identity and address verification [at this link](https://golightyear.com/help/getting-verified/verifying-your-identity-and-address).

It’s also important that you get in touch from the same email address or phone number that’s associated with your Lightyear account. Otherwise, our support team may go through some additional verification steps to ensure they’re speaking to the right person.

I want to update my details

A W-8BEN - sometimes referred to as a certificate of foreign status - is a requirement to buy US stocks. It’s a declaration that you are not a US tax-paying resident.

You’ll come across this during the onboarding process when we’re setting up your account.

What is a W-8BEN form?

Finding your account has been closed is a frustrating experience. We’ll never close an account without good reason but unfortunately, due to being a regulated financial institution, we are sometimes limited in what we can say about account closures. 

It’s generally done to keep our platform safe for our users and to prevent bad actors committing financial crime. 

Some broad reasons why we close accounts are:

- we can't offer our services based on residency, citizenship or tax obligations
- we are given false or misleading information
- a user has duplicate Lightyear accounts - we only permit one per customer
- we have good reason to believe the security of an account has been compromised

This list is includes common examples but is non-exhaustive. You can read more about this in our [terms of service](https://golightyear.com/terms#32-account-suspension) policy. 

We can’t always be specific about why we’ve closed an account, explaining the details that lead to us closing accounts could help fraudsters get around our security controls.

If you have any questions about your account, get in touch with our [support team](mailto:support@golightyear.com).


Why did Lightyear close my account?

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