10 simple tips for spotting a fraudulent e-commerce site

Just last week, I was asked for my opinion on whether or not an e-commerce site displaying huge discounts could be a scam.

I won't name the site here, to avoid any defamation claims…

Because before giving you some basic techniques, I need to raise a point of caution: the line between lack of competence and malicious intent is sometimes very thin.

None of the verification steps I'm going to show you will, on their own, tell you whether a site is trustworthy or not. But the fewer criteria of reliability a site meets, the higher the chance that it's not trustworthy…

If you're a developer, this will also give you a list of criteria to check for your own sites!

What is a fraudulent site?

Here, the term fraudulent is used in its broadest sense, which can include:

• A site that will take your money but never provide the requested service or product
• A site that sells counterfeit products
• A site with deceptive commercial practices (fake discounts, for example)
• A site with no after-sales support whatsoever, run by a fictitious company
• Etc…

Detecting a fraudulent site

Here is a non-exhaustive list of all the checks you can perform to verify whether a site can be trusted:

If you have other criteria, feel free to mention them in the comments—they will be added to the article!

Verifying the company running the site

Any site selling products or services in France must be run by a registered company, whose contact details can be verified.

#1 - Does the site have a legal notice page?

This is a mandatory page where you should find the site owner, the company's contact details, the hosting provider, the data privacy policy, etc…

Not all countries have the same legislation on this matter, but you should at least be able to find the company's contact details.

For sites of English-speaking origin, you'll often find "About" pages, which serve the same purpose.

No legal notice page or contact details? Watch out 🚩

#2 - Does the company actually exist?

In France, you can verify a company's registration using its SIREN number (available in the legal notice). Once you have this identifier, you can check the company's information on the site: https://www.societe.com/

If the company isn't French, you can generally find an equivalent site for the country in question!

The company's contact details don't match anything? Bad sign 🚩

#3 - Terms and conditions of use/sale

When a site sells you something, it must provide you with general terms and conditions, which you should review. These terms are usually available in the site's footer, or during checkout.

No terms and conditions, or strange terms? That's a risk 🚩

Checking the site's content

Just because a site exists, and is maintained by a registered company, doesn't mean it's necessarily trustworthy, or that its services match the quality advertised!

#4 - Customer reviews or references?

A site with no customer reviews (or references, in the case of a B2B site) for its products may be:

• Either a very recent site, and therefore with few sales to its credit
• Or a site that doesn't allow anyone to leave reviews
• Or a site that only receives negative reviews (and deletes them as they come in)

Ideally, a site should display customer reviews (both good and sometimes more mixed), and above all no review that gives the impression of having been written by a bot (or by someone paid to write it).

On the other hand, a site with several reviews on platforms like Trustpilot is rather a good sign!

#5 - Is the content quality decent?

A professional site should showcase content with professional quality. If you come across a site with:

• Typos
• Poor quality images
• Missing or incorrect translations

Everything suggests the site was put together very (too?) quickly, and that it could disappear just as quickly…

#6 - Too many missing or empty links?

It's fairly common to browse the footer of an e-commerce site and find numerous lists of links (social networks, legal pages, etc…), but when you click on them…

Oops… The page you're looking for doesn't exist.

One or two broken links, that's possible. But all the social media links broken? That's odd.

Checking the site's history

#7 - Search for signs of scams on Google

There are dozens of sites where people gather to warn consumers about potential scams. As soon as you have the slightest doubt, head to Google and type:

"[Site name] scam?" or "[Site name] arnaque?"

If nothing comes up, that doesn't mean the site is safe, but if even a single scam report comes up, run 🚩

#8 - How long has the site existed?

By using a tool like WhoIs and looking up the domain name information, you can get an indication of when the domain name was created.

A domain name registered last month, paired with a suspicious site? Bad combo 🚩

#9 - Who owns the domain name?

Same technique as before, a whois search will potentially give you information about the domain name owner (this isn't always the case).

It's not always easy to spot strange information, but sometimes you can detect a recurring pattern!

#10 - What country is it hosted in?

Using sites like iplocation.net, you can enter a domain name, and see which country the site is hosted in.

Most of the time this information is harmless, but if the country in question is known for turning a blind eye to online scams 🚩