How to know if a website is safe – As more people develop new websites for e-commerce, cybercriminals use illegitimate sites to capture your personal information. Although hackers continue to rely on malware and ransomware, they also use phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks and fake websites. Most criminals use the attacks to access sensitive data like your address, account numbers, social security number, and personal documents. Before entering personal data into an unfamiliar site, you can verify the site’s validity by examining a few pages and sections that reveal its authenticity. The following sections describe how to determine if a website is safe for transactions and downloads.
URL Type
Before entering an unfamiliar site, you should examine the URL type. If you only see HTTP, the site is not registered as a secure site. Only visit the sites that have an HTTPS as their URL. However, the URL type will not guarantee if a website is safe. Criminals can develop HTTPS sites, but you can use other methods to verify a company’s authenticity.
Verification Methods for a Safe Website
Although most established websites that feature ecommerce options have adequate verification methods, the homepages of criminal “fake sites” often have simple or inadequate options for verifying a user’s identity. If you notice that a site only uses a single verification process for obtaining passwords or PINs, exit the site and delete its cookies. Legitimate sites often use multi-factor authentication to identify users and conduct transactions. What is multi-factor authentication? It’s a verification process that requires users to provide two or more pieces of information to establish identity.
Website Appearance
Another sign that a webpage isn’t on the level is its questionable appearance. If a page looks hastily built and contains faulty navigation and apparent errors, it’s likely a front for cybercriminals looking for personal data. When a site looks like an infant designed it with bad grammar, it’s best to leave the page and clear your search history. Often, fake sites will have obnoxious ads unrelated to the site’s genre that will pop up and ask you to follow the link. Criminals have several options to grab your information when exploring their sites. This includes malware links, phishing ads and personal data requests.
Contact Information
Have you visited sites that don’t include a contact information section? Legitimate companies and sellers will always have a contact information page containing an email address, phone number and social media links. Some criminal sites will have a contact page, but it will appear blank or display limited information. Anyone that wants to conduct business online will proudly display detailed information to keep in touch with customers. Fake sites containing contact pages will often have multiple errors in their information, including misspellings, other languages, and inconsistent formatting.
Privacy Policy for a Safe Website
The lack of a privacy policy is another feature of an illegitimate company when questioning if a website is safe. Privacy policies should include a lengthy legal document that lays out its rules concerning the user’s obligations and protections. Any document claiming to be a privacy policy that contains multiple grammatical errors is unsafe and should not be confirmed. Privacy policies provide essential legal protections for the customers and the business. These are never excluded from a legitimate, secure website.
Website Malware
Typically, hackers rely on malware to gain unauthorized access to a user. Fake sites often use links to lure their victims with claims of miracle cures, instant relief, life-altering experiences or immediate wealth. Phishing links will use an unrelated topic to entice the user. When someone clicks the link, they are transferred to a membership page that requests personal data like your name, address, credit card number and so on. Grammatical errors are common on these pages, and sometimes it’s apparent that the creator is not accustomed to writing English. Fortunately, search engines detect several sites that contain malware and will flag the site as being unsafe or hazardous.
Although the web is full of fake sites and faulty links that lead to criminal organizations, you can avoid identity theft by examining the site closely to see if the website is safe. If it’s not, continue looking for the telltale signs that the site is unsafe.
