Scam or Not?

Retired Boards Appdev Authentication

Topic summary

A user received suspicious emails claiming their Shopify store faces “permanent closure” due to compliance issues with their theme and robots.txt file. The emails warn of serious consequences including account deactivation, domain blacklisting, and service termination if issues aren’t resolved immediately.

Verdict: Confirmed Scam

A respondent verified this is fraudulent, advising to:

  • Check the sender’s email address (likely from gmail.com rather than an official Shopify domain)
  • Delete and ignore the message

The garbled/reversed text in parts of the email is a red flag indicating a phishing attempt designed to create urgency and trick store owners into clicking malicious links or providing sensitive information.

Summarized with AI on November 5. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I keep getting these emails and I am not getting any answers via Shopify…

Security Alert: Resolve Issues or Face Permanent Store Closure

Dear Shopify Store Owner,

We have identified some critical compliance issues related to your store’s theme and robots.txt file that need your immediate attention.

Why This Matters:

Your store is currently not compliant with Shopify’s Terms of Service (TOS). This non-compliance can lead to serious consequences, including

Suspension of Sales
Website Termination
Domain Blacklisting
Data Export Restrictions
Account Deactivation
Support Access Revocation
Service Agreement Termination
Important pages on your website are being disallowed on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), which can negatively impact your store’s SEO and visibility.

2

Yep, a scam. Check the from email address, it’s likely @gmail and not @Shopify_77 .com

Delete and ignore.