Things You'll Need:
- common sense
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Step 1
If it is not a well-known and reputable site, carefully examine it.
If the prices seem too good to be true, perhaps they are. Do a little investigating before you give a stranger your financial information. Is there a phone number and address on the site? If you call or e-mail, do you reach a human being? Does the site look like it was carefully and professionally set up, or hastily thrown together? Is the language grammatically correct? Do the sales terms and warranty sound logical? Most scam sites are set up in foreign countries where English is not their main language. -
Step 2
Check the registration and history of the site.
Check the domain name owner at http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp or similar site. For example, if you were to enter ccs-digital.com into the box, you would see that it IS registered to the Far Rockaway address at the top of each page, the contact is the same phone number, and it has been in existence since 2002. That should give you some reassurance. For obvious reasons, scam sites don't stay around too long. -
Step 3
Be suspicious of any seller who requires a money order, Egold, or Western Union payment.
These payments can not be reversed if you are cheated. In my opinion, Western Union should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting scammers with a particularly nasty method. A seller, let's call him George, will tell you to send a thousand dollars to a Western Union office with a password which you will not reveal until you have received the merchandise. When George receives confirmation that the money is waiting, he will ship. That way he feels safe that payment is made and you feel safe that you will receive the merchandise. Days or weeks go by and you receive nothing. You contact Western Union to be told they already released the funds to George! But how can they do that when you have never given him the password? That's when they tell you they don't really enforce that. They just turn the money over to anyone who shows up saying "I am George and you're holding a thousand dollars for me." -
Step 4
Never give ANY site your pin number, social security number, mother's maiden name or information which can be used to steal your identity.
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Step 5
Be concerned if they don't ask for the CVV number and be prepared to provide it.
The CVV is the 3 or 4-digit number on the back of the credit card which follows the last 4 of the card itself. This number is not recorded on the slip when your card is processed at a store. For online transactions, the vendor is not permitted to store this on their server where a hacker might find it. So if a scammer finds a discarded credit card slip or hacks into an e-commerce web site, he won't have the CVV number. When you place an order online, most sites will ask for this number. This is an extra verification that the person placing the order has the card and didn't just find a discarded slip. Yet some people place credit card orders with us and leave the CVV blank. For your protection, we will not process orders without it. -
Step 6
Insist on having the merchandise shipped to your billing address.
A crook with your stolen credit card is unlikely to order merchandise and have it shipped to your address. Yet a number of people insist on entering other addresses in their orders. This is a dangerous precedent to set because now there is no way to tell a legitimate transaction from one entered by a crook. Some people argue. "I do it all the time on other sites." If those other sites are foolish enough to ship orders to incorrect addresses, that's their problem. If every site insisted - as we do - that merchandise only be shipped to the valid address, it would go a long way toward reducing online fraud.
