How Do You Spot A Spoof Shopping Site?

Cherrypie7 | 19:19 Wed 11th Jan 2012 | Shopping & Style

6 Answers

How can you tell the difference between a site which looks like the original site, e.g amazon to a fake?
Is there any signs to look out for?

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dasherman

The domain name perhaps.

joko

only use the genuine URL... type it in... never follow a link

stuff like mispellings, bad grammar and lact of punctuation etc can give it away too

Mrsspagnoli57

As well as spellings/grammar be vigilant for 'Americanisms' 'color' 'date formats 01/11/12 (as opposed to 11/01/12), and $ currency on supposedly British/UK sites. Sloppy spelling is the usual give away

starone

I was caught once with a site called Argos Sport. I thought it was a branch of Argos (it wasn't). I ordered a scooter and paid for it by credit card. We never got the scooter but I did get the money made good by the credit card people. My point is, there was no indication at all, it looked like a perfectly credible site.

Buenchico

Running a 'Whois' search on the domain name can often tell you a great deal. For example, here's the result of a search for Amazon.co.uk:
http://webwhois.nic.u....x=0&WHOIS+Submit.y=0
and here's Amazon.com:
http://www.whois.net/whois/amazon.com

Watch out for domain names which have been registered (against the rules) bu 'non-trading individuals', in order to hide their details. Also be wary of URLs registered in Nigeria or (particularly) China.

The only place to check URLs ending in '.uk' is here:
http://www.nic.uk/other/whois/
There are several site for checking .com (and other) URLs but I usually use this one:
http://www.whois.net/

Also check that all of the links on the website actually work, and go to where you'd expect them to.

Remember that UK-based web traders are legally obliged to provide you with a postal address (and not just an email address). If there's an address, try using Google Earth to see whether it exists and, if so, whether it's a shop, a warehouse or a private house. If there's a phone number given, try ringing it.

Chris