Thanks to the internet, the way of interacting with various companies has certainly changed. Today, every company intends to promote itself through an official website on the web, which allows potential customers to obtain useful information about the company, its products or services it sells, but also to purchase them directly online and have them delivered to their home.
However, nowadays creating a website has become a practice accessible to everyone; for this reason, receiving precise information is not always easy, and when such information is found it is not guaranteed to be real or updated, as it may not come from the company’s official website. But there is more: if a website pretends to be a company but actually does not represent it, yet offers a payment method, it is clearly trying to carry out a scam.
It is therefore legitimate to ask how it is possible to recognize an official website from a fake one. Below is a series of information and tools through which it is possible to notice the authenticity of a website.
There are various tools that can be used to quickly understand if a website is official; first of all, it is possible to find out who owns it through Whois services, among the main ones are www.whois.com, www.whois.net, www.register.com/whois, which provide very valuable information as they allow you to understand when the website was registered. Another very useful tool is the website www.sito-ufficiale.com, where you can find a list of official internet sites of famous people, companies, products, institutions, natural areas, and if the internet site link found matches the one on Sito-Ufficiale.com, it is definitely the official site. Another useful tool that the web provides is the https protocol; if present in the navigation bar, it guarantees that transactions on that site are secure, but it is certainly not a guarantee that we are visiting the official website, since buying https protocols is not difficult.
Personal information
A respectable official website definitely displays the company’s data it represents. The data that the company can make available are numerous: headquarters address, phone and fax numbers, email box (possibly PEC, i.e. certified, which further contributes to improving the website’s reputation) and many more. However, the fundamental information that must absolutely come from the website, because only the company can possess it (except in rare cases), is the VAT number.
Trying to search for the phone number on a search engine or trying to call it, one can certainly understand if the website really belongs to the company.
The domain
It must be kept in mind that for a company building a website represents a real investment, which requires spending money (except for very small companies, which prefer to rely only on social pages). Simply put, therefore, to have a clue regarding the official nature of a website it is enough to look at the internet domain: if it is simple and ends with “.it” or “.com”, it is probably an official site. Instead, all domains that contain too many dots or are based on free portals should arouse suspicion.
The “about us” page
A respectable corporate website always has an “about us” page: its purpose is precisely to tell the reader about the company’s origins, its products, its objectives, as well as telling the user particular and interesting anecdotes related to the company’s history. Very often, financial data are then reported financial data, which highlight the good results achieved.
Browsing from mobile devices
This criterion should not be taken in an absolute sense, but can be a valid suggestion when combined with other demonstrations: it is advisable to open the same website on a mobile device. If the company portal is optimized for viewing on smartphones and adapts automatically, it has been properly designed, so it is likely to be genuine.
The possible payment method
If the company website allows purchases, before proceeding it is good to verify the payment method. The portal, in case of doubt, must offer guarantees. If the portal only allows payment with credit or prepaid cards, it is better not to trust it; the PayPal system, however, is an excellent guarantee, as it allows obtaining a refund in case of fraud.
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