GoDaddy Faces Criticism After Offering Fake Holiday Bonus To Employees

GoDaddy is facing public criticism after sending employees a fake holiday bonus.

BYCole Blake
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The internet domain company GoDaddy has come under fire after sending out an email to its employees offering a holiday work bonus that ended up being fake. The email was a test to teach employees not to click on phishing attempts from potential hackers.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

"Happy Holiday GoDaddy! 2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you," the email read. "Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus! To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th."

Ken Colburn of Data Doctors told 12 News that this is an important type of test for companies to run to prevent potential breaches of security.

"The line-level employees in a company have always kind of been the prime targets for hackers," he said. "Getting them to be really much more suspicious, that's an important task. But doing it in a way that's not going to upset the employees is equally as important."

Regardless, offering a fake holiday bonus is a bad look for GoDaddy, which announced company-wide layoffs, earlier this year.

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About The Author
Cole Blake is currently an Editor at HotNewHipHop based out of Brooklyn, New York. He began working at the site as an intern back in 2018 while studying journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s graduated with a bachelor's degree and written extensively about a wide range of topics including pop culture, film & television, politics, video games, sports, and much more. He’s also covered music festivals such as Gov. Ball and Rolling Loud. You can find him publishing work for HNHH from Monday to Wednesday or on weekends. On the sports front, Cole’s a passionate NBA and NFL fan with his favorite teams being the Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Lakers. He also roots for the Yankees whenever he finds himself at Yankee Stadium or the Red Storm when in the company of other SJU alumni. His favorite hip-hop artists are billy woods, Earl Sweatshirt, Cam’ron, MIKE, and Mach-Hommy.