Taperman articles

How to check whether a website is genuine?

A number of fraud sites are up and running on international servers which might cost dream of a fortune to the ignorant few so it’s important to understand how one can check the website’s reality.

The appearance of the website. Many con sites do not even have a professional design or layout. Though a few scam sites owners can afford professional help as well, but most of them lack it. So, before showing haste in making any purchase from a site, browse the site till you are satisfied by the security offered by the site. The deal even if executed after a few hours or in a couple of days, won’t be lost. Dig information about the company from the about section and history of the company.

Listing of the company. The common databases like FTC (Federal Trade Commission), office of the local Attorney General and sites like RipOffReport.com must be checked to find out if the company is listed or not.

Validate contact information. Owing to the freedom provided by Internet, any scam artist can also  become an on line merchant instantly by just launching a professional looking website. They won’t disclose their contact information and the buyer can never know their identity or even contact them except through the site. Find phone numbers to be able to contact the merchant; the phone numbers should preferably be non-toll free as otherwise the scam artist might be hiding behind or using some other service that redirects the call.

Next stage is to find the information about the company’s contact address. Never ever trust a company which has only a contact form for interaction with buyers as they have a high probability of being run by con artists. Even for email addresses do not trust the email addresses provided by free email services site like Yahoo or Google because those email addresses are reliable only from a communication and can lead to fraudulent cases when using for professional work. Prefer a physical address to a post office box as its still possible to hide behind the latter.

Site-owner. When someone registers a website, information about one’s identity and contact is submitted to a large database which is publically accessible for free.  A buyer just needs to go to any domain registering site and look for the WHOIS query link there. Typing the query domain provides the WHOIS information which lists the owner and company’s details. Now, the buyer can opt for either of the following actions:

1. Match the contact information with that provided on the site.

2. Check if the contact information is provided or not.

Scam artists usually prefer the second situation. They use the privacy guard services provided be domain registrars and then collecting real information regarding the company becomes a cumber some process though still possible. By requesting the domain registrar company’s legal department for the information after stating the reason behind the query as these companies value their clients’ privacy. Once the information is available, validate it by tracing it back.

The name of the owner can be used to search the details on resources for reverse tracing but then, even many such sites belong to scam artists. If one has to go through such a process to buy something, the purchase is not worth it according to my opinion.

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