posted by admin on Jun 6
The internet is an amazing resource. It allows you to quickly learn about almost anything, to find poetry and read stories both new and ancient, it even now brings both radio, television and films to you at the click of a left mouse button. However, it is important to remember that criminals use the internet too, and there are many people out there who are not genuine, and are trying to steal your identity, or even simpler, take your money from you. There are ways you can protect yourself, and ways that you can spot fraudulent websites. This article could end up being very long, so rather than cover everything, I am going to ignore email fraud, virus infection & identity theft. Using this website on roller banners as an example, I’m going to focus on ‘fake’ websites that are just trying to directly take your hard earned money away from you.
The days of the yellow pages are on their way out, when we want to find something many of now just go to our computers and ‘google it’. We search for what we are looking for, and once we have found it we buy it. The advantages of this are numerous, it can be done from the comfort of our home/office, it can be done at any time day or night, and we can quickly compare multiple companies offering multiple products. When we are searching though, how can we make sure that we don’t end up the victim of a criminal selling something that he doesn’t own?
First off, it is quite important to make sure that your browser is up to date. Older versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer are more susceptible to being hacked, and the newer versions of the browsers have quite sophisticated filters in place that are able to spot and flag up most fake websites before you even land on them, protecting you from even ending up on them.
When you are looking to buy something from a website, if you click through from another site you are more likely to end up on a fake site, especially if the website you click through from is at all dodgy. This is especially true for emails. We all get junk email in our box’s. If you receive an email and you click on a link in the email, that click could take you anywhere. If you just avoid doing this, you eliminate this as a danger.
Please note, this is especially true for any email you receive that claims to be from a bank. It may say it’s from Lloyds TSB, but when you click on the link, it may take you to an identical looking website to enter your details that is in fact a fake website ready to steal your log in details. So how should you choose your website? Use the search engines.
In order to appear in google or yahoo, a website has to have gained a certain amount of trust from the engines, and that comes with time. If you are looking to order some banner stands, and you do a search for banner stands, the websites that appear are very likely to be legitimate companies that have been around for some time. You are probably going to be alright.
Once you have chosen your website, have a careful look at the site. Does it look legitimate? Does it look honest? Has it been set up in a way that is open about who they are and what they do? Let us look again at the example site. If you go to their roller banner page again, they have done all the right things. They have their products laid out with clear and obvious pricing – no hidden costs here. They haven’t got lots of links going out to other websites and other people’s products. On the internet you can be paid every time someone clicks on one of your adverts, so often dodgier sites have multiple adverts to try and make money from clicks. Most importantly, on the top of the page, they have the phone number of their company clearly displayed. If you have any doubt about them, or have any questions on their product you can now just call them. All these elements come together to form a clearly trustworthy site.
Illegitimate websites won’t have these elements. You won’t be able to easily contact them by phone. Often costs won’t be clearly marked, and there will be numerous links going out of the website.
If in doubt, do not buy. If you have any inkling that there is something wrong, you are better off going elsewhere. There are always going to be plenty of other vendors ready to sell you the product that you are looking for. Once you hand your money over to one of these companies, you are unlikely to ever see that money again.