There are thousands of websites occupying space on the Internet, both legit and scams/fakes. They all look real and legit. It’s our responsibility to know how to identify fake websites among them.
Well, you don’t need to go into deep research concerning that. We have done that for you.
All you have to do is to relax and read carefully while we show you five simple steps to identify fake websites/apps.
So let’s dig in
how to identify fake sites
Below are simple and free tips to identify fake or scam websites
- Check the site URL
The first thing you consider when buying, investing, or giving your information on a website is the URL.
Almost on every site, you will see HTTPS or HTTP before every website domain, but they’re not the same.
There are differences between HTTP and HTTPS, but many people don’t pay attention to them.
A secure website always carries https. The (s) after http signifies that the website is secure and protected against hackers.
A website with http (without ‘s’) may not be a fake or a scam website, but it’s something you should avoid.
Those types of websites are not secured and protected.
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Hackers can easily get your information from those websites or they may be owned by hackers/spammers who are trying to steal people’s details. Such as credit cards and other things.
Some good browsers like chrome and Firefox will warn you that the website is not secure.
It’s good to avoid those types of websites.
- Check the Domain
Checking a website domain is another way to identify fake websites.
A website domain is known as a website address e.g www.google.com in case you don’t know.
A professional hacker may create a phishing website using websites like amazon, eBay, aliexpress domain.
Not that they will use the exact domain of those websites. Most times, they change only an alphabet.
This is what they do. They will create a website with a domain like amaz0n.com instead of amazon.com.
By looking at those two domains above, you may not know that they are totally different until you check both of them carefully.
The first domain contains “0” instead of “o”.
So it’s very important to check a website domain before investing/buying anything from any website.
- Check Contact details
It’s very important to check the contact details of every website you are trying to invest, purchase or earn from.
In every legit website, there are always contact details to contact the site owner or support.
Not only that, there are other important pages that should be checked, which are about, privacy policy and terms and conditions.
If you see any websites without those pages, it’s very clear that the website is fake.
Some of those fake website owners may decide to add fake contact details to their sites.
In most cases, you should use that contact details to contact them.
If they fail to reply to you, that shows that even if you got scammed from the website and contact them, they won’t reply to you. So avoid those websites.
- Offering too cheap products
People like cheap things. The worst part is that most people don’t care about the quality or where they are trying to buy from.
When a website offers too cheap products compared to other websites, it’s 80% clear that the website may be fake.
However, I am not saying their products must have the same price or higher than others, but they should not be too cheap.
There is no doubt that people know how much the product they want to buy is worth even before seeing the price.
When something that is supposed to sold for $100 or above is being labeled on a website for $50, your brain should be able to tell you that “it’s either the website is fake or the product is fake”
Moreover, if it’s an earning or investment website/app. A website where they pay you for performing tasks such as surveys, clicking links, and others, or an investment platform, you should be in mind that there is no free money anywhere.
No website or app will pay you without earning more than what they earn from you.
You should avoid any website/app promising huge money for too simple tasks or huge profit for small investments. e.g invest $100 and get $200 in 24 hours.
- Check reviews
It’s a good thing to check reviews on a website you are trying to invest/buy from. Not only one review but multiple reviews from different platforms.
You can simply Google and type the website/product’s name together with the review. Here is how you do it.
Let’s say I want to buy something from amazon, I will just head to Google or other search engines and type “amazon review”.
It will bring different results from different websites. In this case, you have to check many of them because the site/product owner may trick you by using his other website to write a fake review or pay someone to do that.
Any website/product with bad reviews it’s something you should not trust.
Conclusion
It’s also good to check the payment options of any website you want to buy from.
A legit website will use secure payment options like PayPal, credit cards, and other secure payment options.
Websites with two or more secure payment options are known to be legit. And always be cautious with websites with insecure payment options like a wire transfers.
Websites with only social media sign-up or login options, are known to be phishing websites.
Those website owners are hackers trying to steal people’s information.
Once you use your Facebook, Instagram, or social media platform to log in, your information will be shown in their database.
