Well this is a new one.

UK financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which often issues warnings regarding clone or copycat websites of properly regulated companies it licenses, has announced that the FCA itself has been hit by a clone of sorts.

The FCA issued a notice that a web domain has been set up at www.register-fca.org, which is a clone of the FCA’s financial services register. That is one of the more popular online services provided by the FCA, where anyone can search for information about FCA-licensed companies, people or products. (We here at FNG are frequent users of the site).

The FCA stated that it is currently working to get the fake page taken down, but it appears to be up and running now as of the time of writing.

One quick way to identify the fake site – which looks nearly identical to the FCA’s real register page at https://register.fca.org.uk/ – is that it isn’t SSL-enabled, such that it should appear as “Not Secure” in the address line of your web browser, as per above. The FCA’s site is “https” SSL enabled.