How to verify a website

1. Check if the URL is misspelled

One key indicator of a fake site is a misspelled URL. Fraudsters may change up a URL name slightly, like using amaz0n.com, or they may change the domain extension — like amazon.org instead of amazon.com.

2. Check for site seals

Site Seals are highly identifiable visual indicators that come with SSL Certificates to advertise the fact that a website is encrypted.

A site seal signals that the site is authentic, and you can usually click on a site seal to reveal more information about the website and how it was verified. Seals that do nothing when clicked should not be trusted, as they are likely illegitimate copies of seals.

 Why Trust Seals (Site Seal) Play a Vital Role on E-commerce Websites

 3. Look for a lock

The padlock on a website means that a site is secured by a TLS/SSL certificate that encrypts user data. You can look for the lock on the upper left of the address bar. There are three types of TLS certificates that will each display a lock: Domain Validation, Organization Validation, and Extended Validation.

Not secured 

 

Secured

If a site doesn’t have a lock, most browsers will display a “not secure” warning. In the past, simply looking for the lock was enough, but with the increase of online fraud, you need to look deeper than the padlock to verify a website. Be aware that every Secured site URL starts with “https”

Last modified: Tuesday, 7 December 2021, 11:07 PM