You’re about to click a link. Or worse, type your credit card on a site you’ve never heard of. And honestly ? Something feels off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. We’ve all been there. The good news : spotting a sketchy website isn’t rocket science once you know what to look at. The bad news : scammers are getting better, way better than five years ago.
So before you hand over your money or your email, take 30 seconds. Just 30. I keep a short mental checklist every time I land on a site I don’t know, and I’ll share it with you here. By the way, if you ever want to dig into a curated selection of useful and legit websites by category, take a look at https://1001sites-pour-internet.com – it’s a small directory I’ve come across that actually filters the noise instead of dumping you on random results.
Check the URL first, always
This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised. Look at the address bar. Really look at it. Is it amazon.com or amaz0n-deals.shop? Is it paypal.com or paypa1-secure-login.com? Scammers love numbers that look like letters, weird extensions, extra dashes.
A few red flags I always watch for :
- The domain extension is strange (.shop, .top, .xyz for what claims to be a major retailer)
- There are hyphens where a real brand never has any
- The subdomain is weirdly long – support-account-verify.somethingrandom.com
- The site uses HTTP instead of HTTPS (no padlock icon)
One thing though : the little padlock doesn’t mean the site is honest. It just means the connection is encrypted. A scammer can buy an SSL certificate for free in 10 minutes. So the padlock is necessary, but not sufficient. Don’t stop there.
The “smell test” – does anything feel off ?
Sometimes you land on a page and something just feels wrong. Trust that feeling. Often it’s because of small details your brain picks up before you do.
Ask yourself : is the design weirdly outdated ? Are there obvious spelling mistakes in the header ? Are the product photos clearly stolen from somewhere else (you can right-click and do a reverse image search on Google Images, it takes 5 seconds)? Are prices absurdly low – like an iPhone 17 Pro at $199?
Franchement, if the price looks too good to be true, it is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an exception to that rule online. Not once.
Look for real contact information
A legit business will tell you who they are. A scam site will hide. Scroll to the footer. Then check :
- A physical address – and not a fake one. Copy-paste it into Google Maps. Is it actually a real building, or a vacant lot in Delaware ?
- A phone number that you can actually call (try it, just to see)
- A company registration number – in most countries, real businesses have one
- A clear “About” page with actual humans, not stock photos of smiling models
If the only way to contact them is a generic contact form and a Gmail address, that’s a problem. I’m not saying every small business has a big office – plenty don’t. But the absence of any verifiable info is suspicious.
Check the domain age
This one’s underused and it’s gold. A scam site is usually fresh – a few weeks or months old. A real e-commerce store has years of history. Go to whois.com or who.is, paste the domain, and look at the creation date. A site claiming to be “the leading retailer in Europe” that was registered four months ago ? Yeah, no. Sometimes the WHOIS info is hidden behind a privacy service, which is fine in itself, lots of legit owners do that for spam reasons. But combine it with a brand-new domain and a shop selling Rolex at 90% off, and you have your answer.
Read reviews – but read them properly
Don’t just trust the reviews on the site itself. Of course they’re going to be all five stars. Open a new tab and search for :
- “[site name] reviews”
- “[site name] scam”
- “[site name] avis” (if you read French, sometimes you get different results)
Check Trustpilot, Reddit threads, forums. Real reviews have nuance – people complain about shipping being slow, but praise the product. Fake reviews all sound the same, posted within days of each other, with generic praise like “great seller, fast shipping, A+++”.
Trustpilot is useful but not bulletproof either. Some companies pay for fake positive reviews. Reddit is rougher but often more honest – people don’t sugarcoat there.
Tools that do the heavy liftin
You don’t have to check everything manually. A few tools do most of the work :
- Google Safe Browsing – paste the URL at transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
- VirusTotal – scans the URL across dozens of security databases
- ScamAdviser – gives a quick trust score, not perfect but useful as a first filter
- URLVoid – similar idea, aggregates multiple blacklists
Perso, I use VirusTotal whenever I’m about to download something from a site I don’t fully trust. Takes 10 seconds, saves you from a lot of malware headaches.
Payment is where you need to be the most careful
Even if the site passes all the checks above, the payment step is your last line of defense. A few rules I never break :
Never pay by bank transfer to an unknown seller. Once the money is gone, it’s gone. No recourse.
Prefer credit card or PayPal. Both offer buyer protection. If something goes wrong, you can dispute the charge. With a debit card or transfer, good luck.
If the site only accepts crypto, gift cards, or Western Union ? Run. Just run. Those are the favorite payment methods of scammers because they’re irreversible.
And please, don’t save your card details on small sites you’ll never use again. Use virtual card numbers if your bank offers them – Revolut, N26, and many traditional banks now do.
The 30-second checklist before clicking “Buy”
To wrap this up, here’s the routine I’d recommend before any purchase on an unfamiliar site :
- Look at the URL – any weird spelling, dashes, or extensions ?
- Check HTTPS and the padlock
- Scroll to the footer – real contact info ?
- WHOIS lookup – domain age ?
- Search “[site] scam” or “[site] reviews” in a new tab
- Run it through VirusTotal or ScamAdviser if anything feels off
- Pay with a method that protects you
Does it sound like a lot ? It’s really not. After two or three times, you do it in under a minute, almost unconsciously. And it can save you hundreds of euros, plus the nightmare of identity theft.
One last thing. Trust your gut. If something feels weird, close the tab. There are millions of websites out there – you don’t need to take a risk on this one. Is the deal really worth the doubt ? Probably not.
