Is this a real store?
Four checks you can make in under a minute, before you type a card number into anywhere new.
Nothing anybody can tell you makes a store safe. What we can do is give you four checks that make an unsafe one far harder to miss — and they work on stores that did not exist when this was written.
Key points
- Read the name before the first single slash, and know a padlock is not a badge of honesty
- Look for a phone number, a street address and the state it is registered in
- Refuse a wire, Zelle and gift cards to anybody you have not dealt with before
- Search the store’s name plus the word reviews, away from the store’s own site
What to remember
- None of these four checks proves a store is safe. Together they make an unsafe one very hard to miss.
- Card first, always. Sending money yourself to somebody you have never dealt with is the single commonest way people lose real money online, and there is no scheme that gives it back.
- Search the store’s name plus the word reviews. The results the store cannot edit are the ones worth reading.
Try this
Search the name of a store you already use, plus the word reviews, and see what comes back. Doing this on somewhere familiar is how you learn what an ordinary result looks like.
Practice: Is this a real store?. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.