A lawsuit filed in Manitoba in May 2026 says a Quebec packaging manufacturer wired $203,664 after an email that appeared to come from its insurance broker. The claim says the address ended in "-ca.com" where the broker's ends in ".ca". That is a claim, not a finding.
Manufacturers and resellers pay your invoices on emailed instructions.
An invoice with new bank details is the pattern to watch. Attackers read your domain. We read it first and show you what is open.
Attackers now use AI to read a business the way a search engine does: the website, directories, search results and what AI assistants say. Each finding we hand you is human-verified before your assessment is released.
What we read for electronics distributors
- The records that tell inboxes whether to refuse email sent as you (DMARC, SPF and DKIM), read externally.
- Web addresses an attacker could register to look like yours, each checked: is it registered, is it set up for mail.
- Breach records for addresses at your own domain, read externally; nothing inside is touched.
- The mail records of every other domain your company owns, read externally.
- The certificate your website answers with, seen externally: its name, its dates and who issued it.
- Read with the assessment. What AI assistants answer about your company. A client who asks an AI assistant about your company trusts the answer it gives. Assistants build those answers from pages they crawl. A look-alike address an attacker could register can be built to be crawled: its robots file invites the AI crawlers in and its page claims your name. Attackers manipulate AI answers to send your paying and enquiring clients to their own look-alike page, web address, sign-in page, phone number or email. In 2025, asked for the sign-in pages of 50 brands, an AI assistant gave addresses the brand did not control one time in three. The check is built to ask six assistants: Claude, ChatGPT search, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and Copilot, through Bing. Monitoring asks again every week and tells you when an impostor's phone or address is in an answer. Source: Netcraft research, read on 4 November 2026.
The rule, from its source: What does each US state's data breach law ask a business to do?
How the fraud works: Business email compromise, explained
Up to 350 look-alike addresses an attacker could register from your name, checked on each assessment.
75 techniques attackers use against businesses like yours, each checked externally on every assessment.
16 routes to your money, your clients, your accounts and your name, checked end to end on each assessment.
Attackers run AI agents in swarms: many at once, each trying the combinations of these routes against any business it can read. We read for the combinations first.
Everything LeakTrace reads about a business, area by area, with what the business receives and what we never do: Capabilities
How it reaches you
Where an attack uses a look-alike address an attacker registered from your name, the first sign is the registration. Under the watch, LeakTrace reads the look-alike addresses an attacker could register from your name every hour and the day's public list of new registrations each night.
Four steps from left to right. Someone registers a look-alike address from your name, sets up mail or a sign-in page on it, then a message or a call reaches your people and money or a code goes to them. The watch reads the first two steps. The third is your own step: a call back on a number you already have and telling your customers how you ask for payment.
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Step 1
A look-alike address is registered
Someone registers a domain made from your company's name: one letter changed, a word added or another ending.
Anyone can see: The registration record and, once a certificate is issued for it, its entry in the public certificate logs.
What LeakTrace does: Under the watch, a name that shows is dated on your record, with what it showed.
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Step 2
Mail or a sign-in page is set up on it
Mail is switched on for the name, or it answers with a page that looks like your website or a sign-in page.
Anyone can see: The mail record and the page it answers with.
What LeakTrace does: LeakTrace reads its mail and its page and grades it. With the watch, or for the names the look-alike response covers, we send the takedown request in your company's name once you approve it. The registrar decides. Your page shows its answer once it is recorded.
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Step 3
The message or the call reaches a person
An email from it reaches someone at your company or one of your customers. Or a caller who says they are from IT support sends someone to the sign-in page and asks for the code.
Anyone can see: Nothing. It happens inside a mailbox or on a phone.
What LeakTrace does: LeakTrace never goes inside a mailbox or a call. This is the one step only your company can take.
Your step: Tell your customers that you never change payment details by email. Any such note gets a call to a number they already have. Confirm every change of payment details by a call to a number you already have. Sign in with a passkey where your mail system offers one: a code can be passed on from a fake page. A passkey cannot.
How to set up your step
Tell your customers how you ask for payment. Put one line on the invoice footer and the first email you send: "We never change payment details by email. Call the number you already have for us."
- What changes
- Your customers read one extra line. A request that breaks it is easy to spot.
- Stays on?
- Yes. The line can stay on every letter, invoice and first email.
- To undo
- It is wording, not a setting. Take the line out of those templates and it is gone.
Confirm every change of payment details by a call. Any new bank details, from anyone, are confirmed by a call to a number you already have for that person. Never to a number written in the message.
- What changes
- A payment with changed details waits for one short call.
- Stays on?
- Yes. It is a standing rule for everyone who handles payments.
- To undo
- It is a rule, not a setting. It ends the day you stop asking for the call.
Sign in with a passkey where your mail system offers one. Each person adds a passkey in their email account's security settings, on the phone or computer they use.
- What changes
- Signing in can use a fingerprint, a face or the device PIN. A fake sign-in page gets nothing it can pass on.
- Stays on?
- Yes. It is meant to stay on for every account.
- To undo
- A passkey is removed in the same security settings. Sign-in then asks for the password and code again.
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Step 4
The money or the code moves
A customer sends the money for an invoice to new bank details, or someone at your company makes a supplier payment to new bank details, or a code passed on lets someone else sign in.
Anyone can see: Nothing, until someone notices.
What LeakTrace does: Under the watch, the name's first two steps are dated on your record: when it appeared and what it showed.
If a payment went to new details, the first call is to the bank, that day.
How to make that call
If a payment went to new details, call the bank that day. Call the bank's fraud line on the number printed on your card or statement, that day. Then tell the police.
- What changes
- The bank can attempt to recall the payment.
- Stays on?
- It is a one-time step, not a setting.
- To undo
- There is nothing to undo.
A current case, manufacturers and wholesalers. IRS Criminal Investigation, release of 8 Oct 2026, on a sentencing in the Southern District of Texas
A federal prosecutor in Texas announced a sentence on 8 October 2026 in an email scheme that ran from 2020 to 2022. Fraudsters sent emails that appeared to come from known suppliers. A utility trailer company in Mississippi wired $927,080 it believed was going to its trailer supplier. The source does not say how the email was faked.
The source reports the last step. Our part is the first two, where a name is used.
Where an attack uses a look-alike address an attacker registered from your name, we see it first.
The reporting deadlines that apply to you.
Notify affected residents when certain personal information is breached. Timing and content differ.
Report a breach that creates a real risk of significant harm to the Privacy Commissioner and tell the people affected.
A summary of published rules, not legal advice. The Rules and Insurance Briefing names the rules that apply to you.
Payment fraud, from the public record.
A federal prosecutor in Texas announced a sentence on 8 October 2026 in an email scheme that ran from 2020 to 2022. Fraudsters sent emails that appeared to come from known suppliers. A utility trailer company in Mississippi wired $927,080 it believed was going to its trailer supplier.
A federal prosecutor in Ohio announced a guilty plea on 28 September 2026 in a case from June 2020. A New Jersey health-care provider received emails that claimed to come from its safety-equipment supplier and paid about $1.1 million to a new bank account.
Each case is from the public source linked under it, in that source's own terms. LeakTrace had no part in any of them.
Your business keeps changing. So does what an attacker can see.
- 01A new vendor or tool is allowed to send as youOne more sender an attacker can pose as.
- 02Your mail moves to a new providerThe records that refuse forged mail can break in the move.
- 03A new portal or subdomain goes liveA new sign-in page anyone can reach.
- 04A certificate lapsesBrowsers warn your clients and a copy looks as trustworthy as you.
- 05Your addresses turn up in a fresh breachReused passwords become a way into the mailbox.
- 06A look-alike of your name is registeredSomeone can now write to your clients as you.
The first month of monitoring comes with the assessment.
Human-verified. The full watch, the proof for every finding and the fix.
What the fourth document is. A dated record of what was read externally, verified by a person at LeakTrace before release. LeakTrace Inc. issues it as a company, with a reference and a fingerprint anyone can check at getleaktrace.com/verify/. No individual signs it. It is not a certification, not a penetration test, not legal or compliance advice and not a statement about your internal systems.
We close it: We give you the fix for each finding and re-check externally until it is closed.
The one change we can make ourselves is to your email records and only when you approve each step, where your DNS host allows it.
Where it does not, you get the exact records to paste.
Your evidence pack:
- an owner summary
- the technical evidence with the fix for each finding
- a rules and insurance briefing
- a dated assessment record
It doubles as your insurance renewal evidence pack:
- the external questions insurers commonly ask at renewal, each shown with its evidence
- forged-email protection where we reach your DNS host, one click per step
- the Rules and Insurance Briefing, which sets each of your findings beside the plain terms a renewal application uses
The assessment comes with an AI security agent on your dashboard: ask it about any finding in plain English and it answers from your own business's findings.
Our AI agents operate externally. They never log in, never install anything and never touch your internal systems. They change nothing by themselves: you approve each change to your email records.
See what is open before anyone else does.
We read externally, find each way in first and show it with a check anyone can re-run. No access, nothing tested, no obligation.
See a sample reading → An invented business, so you see what arrives before you ask for yours.
- We read your business externally.
- You see what is open, with the proof for the lead finding.
- If it is worth it, you order.
What happens if you go ahead. More at getleaktrace.com/see-it-first/.
Read the transcript
- 72 hours. One domain. Nothing to install.
- Discover. Every way in, found from outside.
- Validate. Every finding, proven. Dated and checkable by anyone.
- Close. Forged email: one click per step, where we reach your DNS host and you approve it.
- You get the fix for the rest, step by step, and we re-check until it is closed.
- Monitor. On monitoring: email settings, look-alikes and new host names re-checked every hour. Alerts within the hour.
- Every paid assessment is human-verified before release.
- The outside record of trust. Attackers read businesses with AI. LeakTrace reads them first. getleaktrace.com/see-it-first/