Each day thousands of no good losers setup what they like to call e-commerce websites to scam unsuspecting surfers into disclosing credit card information and make some easy bucks off it. While in most cases, signs on the website desperately scream ’scam’ in to your face and the victim probably deserves it for being dumb enough to get tricked into it, sometimes, it can be hard to differentiate.
With dozens of new services launching everyday promising to make it easy enough for a fetus to start a professional e-commerce website in a matter of minutes the task doesn’t get easier. Thankfully, there are a few cues you can look for to decide if a site is a scam or legit.
1. Secure Connection
This is probably the most important aspect to decide if the site can be trusted or not, ideally, if the site was totally legit and does not provide a secure protocol it should still be exempted from your online shopping. A website with a secure connection has a URL prefixed with ‘https’ instead of ‘http’. Sometimes, however this alone is not sufficient, usually most browsers indicate that the page is secure with a ‘lock’ or similar icon that signifies security. Look for it on the status bar. Clicking the icon would provide more details on the website’s security.
A secure connection is mostly available on order pages so you will need to proceed to the checkout to find out if the site uses a secure connection in most cases.
2. Online Feedback
Googling the site name or the site name + “scam” or the site name + “review” and other key phrases that would provide details on the website will usually lead you to several forum discussions on the site, reading them would give you quite an accurate idea on whether the site can be trusted or not.
It is also important to remember that if a service is doing something right, they would have plenty of criticism as well, Paypal and Godaddy would be two services of note.
3. WHOIS
Checking the WHOIS details for when the domain was created (google ‘whois’ + site name) would indicate how long the website has been online, while this does not necessarily indicate if the site is a scam, trusting fresh services and disclosing credit card information isn’t really the best way to go.
Another point to ponder on with WHOIS details is most reputed online services don’t use a WHOIS guard and disclose company details which implies transparency which in turn contributes to the service’s goodwill.
4. Design
Website design is no longer compromised, compared to the past where even .com giants (hint: Google) had websites that looked like crap, today, reputed services always wear an impressive skin with the perfect blend of colors, effects and navigation. While this isn’t a given, it can be a reason to be skeptical.
The legitimacy of a site however, cannot be decided based on the above points, scammers sometimes do make an effort to make the website as legitimate as possible. If you happen to get scammed, your best bet would be to phone your bank and reverse the transaction, in most cases if you act quickly enough you should be able to undo the damage in time.
If you have any other tips on identifying the legitimacy of websites please share it in the comments.
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The design is a prominent one for sure. I’ve noticed lately so many of the “make money from home” or “get paid by google” style ones with the heartwarming stories played aloud by some genuine sound voice all look suspiciously similar.
same body width, header/footer heights, colours. If you flipped from 1 to another you might think you’d just followed a link to another page.
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