4 Tell-tale Signs of a Fake Ecommerce Store

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you spend more than an insignificant amount of money online, making use of the many ecommerce and online shopping options available to you. It’s easy, convenient and for the most part, quite safe to transact online. Technologies exist to help mitigate much of the risk of doing business online, but having a little know-how and savvy into how to spot whether the ecommerce store you’re about to buy something from is legitimate isn’t a bad idea.

Luckily, there are some quick and easy tell-tale signs that should at least raise your suspicions about the legitimacy of an online store.

Pay Attention to the Design 

Good, clean website design means more than just looking impressive and capturing your attention. Shoddy and quickly designed online stores can also represent a warning sign when you’re trying to determine the legitimacy. Look for things like spelling mistakes, stolen images and product photos.

Always ensure that the store has some of the basic information you’d expect to find listed. Things like their policies and shipping information if you’re buying physical products should be listed. You should also pay particular attention to perhaps the most important information – their contact details, including a physical location.

Look for Website Security

We mentioned technologies designed to keep you safe, and here is where you can determine if the online store is using them.

The first and most important one is ensuring the website is secure. A secure website means that all your data, like your address and payment information (e.g. credit card data) is being securely exchanged with the online store. You’ll know the website is secure if it has an icon of a lock next to the website address in the address bar. Ideally, if the online store isn’t secure, you shouldn’t trust them with your information. Your web browser might also display security warnings when you visit the websites. You shouldn’t ignore these warnings.

Another great way of verifying the online store is to look for the presence of verification, offered by services that maintain a list of verified companies. These are often known as trust seals or trust badges. Big name companies like Truste, Norton and Comodo offer these badges.

Look for a Safe and Secure Payment System

Every online store needs to have a merchant service that processes payments. These payment processors are often the ones that receive and even store your credit card information, so making sure the website is using a legitimate and trusted one might be the most important step of all. Merchant Advice Service can offer these companies trusted advice and guidance on how to choose a trusted merchant service which comes from industry experts for free and with no obligation. If you’re 

ever redirected to a third-party payment service that you don’t recognise, make sure that you check it for the same security as the online store that you’re shopping on.

Consider looking at the payment processor’s assurance that your payment is insured or protected against fraud, as many will offer these assurances if the online store that they are servicing is trusted.

Use Some Common Sense

Common sense is probably your greatest weapon against being taken advantage of by any fake or fraudulent ecommerce stores. Use your gut instinct to decide about whether a company looks trustworthy or not, and combine it with some of the things we’ve detailed on what to look for.

Simple things like user password security requirements or a website asking for too much personal information, or information that might not have anything to do with the sale can also be a tell-tale sign that something is amiss. You should never need to enter any social media accounts or even your identity numbers to make an online purchase, and having to do so might be a reason to reconsider your purchase.

The last step you should take is to protect your computer, mobile phone or other device from things like viruses and malware. Always make sure you update this software to the latest versions. Don’t enter your payment information over untrusted public Wi-Fi either because there might be a bad actor waiting to steal it from you.

It’s also worth remembering that this is a two-way street. Online vendors might have some checks in place to ensure you’re legitimate too, so don’t be put off by things like long password requirements or being asked to solve a captcha before checking out. In fact, these things can be good indicators that the vendor is legitimate. 

Staying safe online takes on many forms and taking all reasonable steps to ensure you’re not the victim of fraud is one of the most important. Using the steps detailed here can go a long way to mitigating some of the most well-known ones, but you should always remain vigilant online against anything that makes you feel uneasy.