Fake merchant sites multiply as the holidays approach; And they are increasingly difficult to spot. Before making a purchase on the Internet, use these free services to check the reliability of an online store.
As the end-of-year holidays approach, you are certainly looking for original gifts for the people you love (or for your in-laws). And if in love you don’t count, it’s still nice to be able to make these purchases without breaking the bank. That’s good, the Web is full of merchant sites that offer offers, each more unbeatable than the last.
Clothing, cosmetics, smartphones, computers or even toys, whatever you are looking for, online advertisements flourish in winter. Popular social networks, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter/X, have also become favored showcases for commercial sites, which promote intensely during the end-of-year holidays.
But not all online merchants are equal, and some sites actually hide scams: counterfeits, poor quality products, false promotions or simply theft of bank details. If fraudulent sites could be identified at a glance at one time, today they are more difficult to identify, because they take better and better care of their appearance, with a beautiful layout, pretty photos of article, customer comments, legal notices and even general conditions of sale.
How to tell the difference between an honest shopping site and a full-blown scam? If large platforms like Amazon, Cdiscount or Rakuten are trustworthy due to their notoriety, how can you spot scams among the multitude of lesser-known sites? Certain more or less subtle signs can indicate potential danger, but they are not always easy to spot for ordinary people. Fortunately, free online services are there to help you detect them.
Based on verified customer reviews, Trustpilot already constitutes a first way of forming an opinion on a site. But you can go even further with Google Safe Browsing or ScamDoc, which we present to you in this article, or even ScamAdviserwell-known tools that all work on the same principle. To use them, simply copy the address of a site into their search bar. These tools then analyze different aspects of the site in question, and then provide an easy-to-understand summary report, in the form of an overall reliability index, accompanied by some explanations and warnings.
For example, an Internet user wondered about the reliability of the mooncolor.store site on the How It Works forum. By submitting the address of the site to ScamAdviser, the result turns out to be unappealing: the site was only created very recently, it has few visitors, its owner conceals his identity and the site only has a controlled comments system. So many signs that should inspire distrust, or at least the greatest caution before making an online purchase.
The scores and analyzes provided by this type of online service are obviously not official certificates of reliability, but they can be a valuable aid when shopping on the Internet. You therefore have everything to gain from keeping them in the favorites or bookmarks of your Internet browser, in order to consult them when you plan to place an order for the first time on a new site. It will only take you a few minutes and may save you from falling for a scam!