The pandemic increased the trend toward online purchases of just about everything and even as the pandemic has waned, many of us continue to make large amounts of our consumer purchases online. Scammers, of course, see this as an opportunity to scam people with phony websites that steal your money and provide you with nothing in return. Some of these phony websites are for totally made up companies that you have never heard of, but which are offering tremendous discounts on popular goods while other phony websites are counterfeit websites of legitimate online retailers.
So how do you determine if you are on a legitimate website?
TIPS
Look at the URL. If you are making a payment, you would want the URL to be preceded by https rather than merely http. The “s” means that your communication is being encrypted and while even some phony websites may go the extra step and use encryption, most do not and so this is an easy way to spot a scam.
Sometimes carefully checking the domain name for a counterfeit website will provide an indication that it is a scam. If the domain name has nothing to do with the real name of the company, you can be confident that is a scam. I would caution you however that merely because the name looks legitimate does not mean that it is. Often scammers will create phony, but very legitimate appearing domain names.
Many phony websites originate in countries where English is not the primary language and therefore if you find numerous grammatical and spelling errors, you can be pretty sure it is a scam.
The Google Safe Browsing Transparency Report is a terrific free service where you can type in the URL and learn if Google’s research indicates it is a scam. Here is a link to it. https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
You can also use Whois.com which is a free service that will tell you who owns a particular URL and how long it has been in service. If your Walmart website has only been around six months and is owned by someone in Nigeria, it certainly is a scam. Here is a link to Whois https://whois.domaintools.com/
Finally, look for reviews of the particular site and Google the name of it with the word “scam” and see what comes up.
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