Top 5 Ways On How To Tell If A Website Is A Scam

Getting scammed is something that those at We Get Scammed For You excel at. Learning how to read through the many various types of websites and discern the clues of a scam isn’t something that is hard to do. It’s just a matter of looking at the evidence, and knowing how to decipher it all.

In this article, we’ll be using a website called Oasis Fashion London to help see how to spot warning signs before it’s too late. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to tell if a website is a scam!

#1. Is There Any Malware On The Site?

One of the easiest ways to tell if a site is a scam site is if they try to download any malicious viruses onto your computer when you go to the site.

Knowing if a website is doing this can be extremely hard to do on your own. You would also need to know a fair amount of computer programming and coding to actually make sense of how a website actually works.

Thankfully, there are websites out there that will analyze all that for you, and tell you if a website is safe to browse to. The one site that we’ll be looking at specifically right here is Virus Total.

Virus Total

Virus Total is a collection of the latest and greatest anti-virus tools that can help check for viruses. While it can be used to check websites, it can also be used to check if a certain file is corrupt or contains any malware.

For example, if you received an attachment from someone you don’t know, and uploaded it to Virus Total, they would be able to tell you if that attachment had anything bad in it.

Using their URL tab, we can upload the website of our choosing and check to see if it is okay to visit. In the screenshot below, we have checked Oasis Fashion London.

Checking A Website On Virus Total

As you can see above, out of the 67 various engines and anti-virus used, none of them found anything wrong with this site. This means that we can go to this site, and not have to worry too much about anything bad happening while on the site.

Malicious SIte

Some sites do have malware, which is why we always do this check first. For example, if one were to check a certain site with Virus Total, they would find the following: If you were to go to the website Text Speier, you would more than likely have a malicious virus on your computer by the time you were done browsing that site. That is why it’s always best to check for viruses on sites that you are unsure about.

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#2. What Do The Reviews Say?

Another site that we frequently use to check out whether a site is a scam is Scamadviser. We wrote an article about them recently.

Scamadviser is a site that uses automation and analysis on a website and gives you a trust score, depending on what they find about the site.

For example, when we last looked at our own website, we received a trust score of about 65% (out of 100), due mainly because our site was still fairly young.

Scamadviser also allows the ability to leave reviews for sites, so that people who use Scamadviser in the future will be informed on whether a site is a scam or not.

When we looked into Oasis Fashion London, we found that Scamadviser gave it a low trust score, along with two reviews of the site:

Low Trust Score On Scamadviser

The two reviews on Scamadviser are fairly new, and both are negative, basically saying that this site is a scam and shouldn’t be used.

There is a lot of power in reviews. Especially reviews on sites that aren’t associated with the particular site they are reviewing. While sites have been known to create positive fake reviews to bolster their authenticity, we have yet to find someone actually creating fake negative reviews for their own site.

All in all, checking for reviews about a certain website (sites that mainly are carrying a product or brand you can buy) is a great way to check if the site is a scam or not.

#3. Does The Whois Registration Show Anything?

When someone purchases a domain, they have to go through a registration process to make sure no one else has claimed it yet.

When they do this, they have to give a bunch of information, like their name, address, and even phone number. When the site was registered and updated will also be added to the whole registration process. While there are ways to make all your information private, you can’t (as of yet) make private when you registered the domain, nor when you last updated it.

What does this mean?

There are public records out there that can show you when exactly a site was created, and when it was last updated. This can help aid us in checking whether the site is new, and if it has ever been updated.

WhoIs Registration

For example, we recently looked at a different website recently, Singer Vipoen, and found that it wasn’t a legit site. One of the clues that tipped us off was that it had been created fairly recently.

As you’ll notice in the image above, the site was created about a month from writing this article. Many scam sites will appear quickly, scam people for a few months, and then disappear. So if a site is less than 3-6 months old, there can be a higher risk of it being a scam.

Looking at Oasis Fashion London, we find that they’ve been around for 8 months.

Whois for OFL

While this evidence doesn’t give us any real clear answer on whether Oasis Fashion London is a scam, we can find out quite a bit about any site by the Whois registration information.

Using the Whois information can help lead us to add more support for whether a site is a scam or not. Overall, it’s a useful way to making sure the site you are visiting isn’t a fraudulent one.

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#4. Does The Site Try To Impersonate Something?

OFL front-page

Right off the bat, when we heard of Oasis Fashion London, we immediately suspected it was a scam site. The reason we did was because it had the word Oasis within its URL.

Many scammers will find a popular brand, or fashionable product, and add that to their domain, making them seem more authentic. When they do this, they are actually making themselves more prone to being found out that they’re a scam!

If anyone were to go to Oasis Fashion London, they would find that at the footer of their website OFL tries to claim they are part of two companies.

Footer of OFL

As you can see from the above image, they try to pretend that they are part of Oasis Fashion and Ted Baker Clothing. Anyone with the ability to do some quick searching online will find out that this is completely false.

This starts to beg the question, if they are lying about this, what else are they not telling you? Will you really receive a product if you purchase from them? Will the product be an authentic brand, or just from a knock-off, which is why the prices are lower?

If a site claims to be part of a brand or store, but isn’t actually the main website, then it is highly unlikely that it’s a legit site. More than likely, it is a site started by a scammer who is ready to take as much money from you as possible, before setting up a completely different site, and doing the process all over again.

So, all the above to say, make sure that you check the authenticity of a website. If they claim one thing, but are clearly not that one thing, then it’s best to find another place to take your shopping.

#5. Does Their Privacy Policy Reveal Anything?

We’ve looked at many websites, and their Privacy Policies. You wouldn’t believe the errors that have been found within them. Some sites are rather bold in claiming all your data, some haven’t even been filled completely, and some sites don’t even have any!

A Privacy Policy is usually a simple page on a website, telling users what exactly a site keeps data-wise, and how they keep it private.

Oasis Fashion London has a rather interesting Privacy Policy.

Collection

You can browse our sites without telling us any personal information
about yourself. If you choose to provide us with personal information,
you consent to the transfer and storage of that information on our
servers

we will collect and store information you provide through our digital
properties and in our stores. The information we collect from you
includes things like:

Name

Mailing address

E-mail address

Phone number

Credit card number and other payment information

You’ll notice that the last part of the above Privacy Policy says that they’ll keep your credit card number. Of course, they are going to keep it safe, and not share it with anyone – or will they?

We may transfer (or otherwise make available) your personal information to our affiliates and other third parties who provide services on our behalf. For example, we may use service providers to authorize and process payments, host our Website, operate certain of its features, serve advertisements on our Website, send e-mail, conduct customer research, and manage and analyze data and our advertising effectiveness. Any access to your personal information by our affiliates or service providers will be limited to that necessary for them to perform their designated functions and we do not authorize them to use or disclose your personal information for their own marketing purposes. We and our service providers may also use your personal information for fraud detection and prevention purposes.

So, according to their Privacy Policy, they may just send your Credit Card number to any of their third party providers. That doesn’t seem like very good privacy.

Credit card information shouldn’t need to stay on a website – a payment processor should take care of it, so that the site itself won’t have any issues later on (in the event that they get hacked, information is leaked, etc).

So checking the Privacy Policy is a great way to check if a site is one that you should do business with. While it’s not going to tell you if a site is a scam, it will help show you the true ethics of what goes on in the background of a site, and will give you better guidance on whether you want to use the site or not.

Telling If A Website Is A Scam Isn’t Hard!

Hopefully, you have come away much wiser and smarter because of this article. It is our opinion that looking at a site to see if it is a scam isn’t really that hard at all, provided that you don’t take anything for granted, and challenge everything that is said.

As you go through these steps to check, you’ll learn more and more on how to tell if a website is a scam. Each time you do it, you’ll find that spotting scams are a little easier and a little quicker.

Choose to learn how to spot ways that website are scams. In the end, you’ll be glad you did. You’ll save a lot more heartbreaks, time, and money.

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We know what it’s like getting scammed – we’ve gotten scammed plenty of times. But because of this, we were able to find similarities between many scam websites.

We created a video course, How To Detect Online Scams, in which we explain these similarities and methods we use to check a website. And we’re happily able to offer it to you for a discounted price.

Unfortunately, we can’t really give you the money that you lost by being scammed (if you did get scammed). But we can give you our course for a cheaper and  more affordable price.

Follow the link below and get our course for 50% off of it’s original price. It’s our way of trying to help out those who have been scammed before, and/or those who don’t have a lot of money to spend!

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is based on our research and analysis. However, we are not liable for any inaccuracies or errors, and readers are encouraged to conduct their own investigations. If you have concerns about the legitimacy of a website, feel free to reach out to us via our contact form to initiate a discussion.

14 thoughts on “Top 5 Ways On How To Tell If A Website Is A Scam”

    • If it’s through WalkTrends that you got scammed from, then there probably isn’t any way to get money back from the scammers. The best course of option is always to check and see what your bank/credit card issuer can do for you. They often have ways they can dispute charges, especially if they are fraudulent.

      Reply
  1. Good morning is those work from home jobs a scam where they say pay 49.00 to get started we help you set up your own website to get paid are those scams?

    Reply
    • You would have to specify which specific work from home jobs you’re talking about, but if they are on our list of work from home sites that are legit, then they are indeed legit.

      Reply
  2. [List Of Sites Redacted]

    I am victim of transdexlogisticsexpress.com fake courier company and from number +1 619-786-5887 as scammer seller.
    All thoose sites is from same server and possibly the same scammer group!

    Reply
    • Thanks for letting us know. The sites you posted probably don’t have anything to do with them, since dozens of unique sites are hosted by servers now-a-days. So, it’s highly unlikely that all those other sites you posted are run by the same scammers.

      Reply

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