9 Ways to Recognise Scam Websites

We often question the legitimacy of websites these days due to the increase number of fraud and scam in our society. We often ask ourselves questions like “Is that website legitimate?  Should you give them your credit card number? Or is it a scam?” .

It is difficult to know whether a flashy, professional looking website has a real, reputable company behind it, Some websites look great and have great deals on hot products, insurance, travel, dvds, or get-rich schemes. But is it for real?

There is no one indicator that is proof positive of a scam, but if a website exhibits a number of these, it is a likely scam.
Adequate precautions needs to be taken to avoid scam. Here are some of the things we look for:

1. Avoid dealing with website that has sallow contact information. A reputable transactional website, that is selling something, will have contact information, including company names, a physical address, a mailing address, an email address /contact form and a phone number which they can be reached on.
2. Be sure of the company based country as some countries have weak consumer protection laws, such as China and Russia. You can check where they are based on www.whois.net.
3. Be sure majority of the links on the websites works.
4. Spend time to check if the content, links and photo on the website are related and suit the theme and purpose on the website. If not that may be an indication of snappy job to defraud you.
5. Watch out for vague information. Reputable companies would give you adequate information about their products and services.
6. When a get redirected to a different website other than what you typed as the web address that can be a sign of a scam.
7. When the terms and conditions of a product include hidden requirements and would cost more or it makes the product less useful be sure that is a scam
8. You can use search engines such as Google, yahoo etc to find the domain name, if no result is found, it is either the Company is new or it is a scam. You can also check the company on shopzilla, shopping.com, Bizrate etc as the bigger and reliable companies get, they will be listed elsewhere in the industry.
9. Watch out for cloned content from other websites.

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