How do I check if a website is safe to buy from?

Fake shops are cheap to create and often look convincing. Rather than trying to spot a perfect fake, the practical approach is a handful of quick checks plus a payment method that lets you reverse the transaction.

What you'll need

• The website address
• A search engine (optional)

Step by step

1. Read the address bar carefully.Look for subtle misspellings, extra words, or unusual endings. Fake sites frequently use near-identical domains to real brands.
2. Do not treat the padlock as a safety signal.It means the connection is encrypted, not that the site is honest. Criminal sites have padlocks too — this is widely misunderstood.
3. Look for a physical address, phone number and company details.Legitimate retailers publish them. A contact form and nothing else is a warning sign.
4. Search the site name with 'reviews' and 'scam'.Ninety seconds. Genuine problems surface quickly, and a site with no online presence at all is itself a signal.
5. Check how old the domain is.A free domain age lookup will tell you. A site selling branded goods that was registered three weeks ago is almost certainly fake.
6. Be suspicious of prices well below market.Heavy discounts on in-demand items are the standard lure. If it is far cheaper than everywhere else, that is the reason.
7. Check the returns policy and terms.Fakes often have missing, nonsensical or copied-and-pasted policies with another company's name still in them.
8. Pay by credit card or PayPal, never bank transfer.Both offer buyer protection. Bank transfer is irreversible and is what fraudsters ask for precisely because of that.

Tips

• Reviews on the site itself are worthless. Look for independent reviews elsewhere, and be wary of a wall of five-star reviews all posted in the same week.
• Social media adverts are a common route to fake shops. Being advertised on a major platform is not a vetting process.
• If you have already paid by card, contact your provider quickly — chargeback and protection schemes have time limits.

Common mistakes

• Trusting the padlock icon — It only means traffic is encrypted. Fraudulent sites obtain certificates as easily as anyone else.
• Paying by bank transfer — It is irreversible with no buyer protection, which is exactly why it is requested.
• Judging by how professional the site looks — Templates and copied product images make convincing fakes trivial to build.

Questions people ask