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Check Fraudulent Websites? Here’s an Easy Way to Avoid Being Fooled!

Currently, various forms of fraud in cyberspace are very easy for you to find. Maybe some of you have been the target of these fraudsters. One of them is by relying on websites.

The ease of building a website opens up new opportunities for fraudsters to act. Therefore, knowledge and how to check fraudulent websites are important for you to learn.

Billions of websites circulating in cyberspace, not all of them are websites that are built for good purposes. Some of them are for criminal purposes, including fraud.

Building a fake website is one of the modes that is often used. So, what form of crime is it?

The Existence of Fake Websites

A website is a page that is used to provide information online, but what if it turns out that the website is used for crime?

Crimes using websites are often committed by cybercriminals. Usually the use of fake websites is to commit the following two crimes.

Phishing Fraud

  • Phishing is a crime by stealing data from internet users. So with the capital of this data, criminals can carry out their actions.
  • For example, starting from breaking into bank accounts, breaking into credit cards, breaking into digital wallet accounts, committing fraud with other people’s accounts, and other similar crimes.
  • Usually the account owner does not realize that their digital assets have been stolen. The way it works is by building a fake website.

The Existence of Fake Websites

A website is a page used to provide information online, but what if the website is used for crime?

Crimes using websites are often committed by cybercriminals. Usually the use of fake websites is to commit the following two crimes.

Phishing Fraud

  • Phishing is a crime by stealing data from internet users. So with the capital of this data, criminals can carry out their actions.
  • For example, starting from breaking into bank accounts, breaking into credit cards, breaking into digital wallet accounts, committing fraud with other people’s accounts, and other similar crimes.
  • Usually the account owner does not realize that their digital assets have been stolen. The way it works is by building a fake website.
  • The user is not aware when he enters his username and password to log in, even though the website he is visiting is a fake website. When the victim enters the username and password, the fraudster can capture it.
  • In this way, the fraudster manages to get the username and password, so he can enter the victim’s account through the real website to immediately commit his crime.
  • A safe way to protect against this is to enable two-factor authentication or two-step verification.
  • Even if the fraudster manages to get the victim’s username and password, he or she cannot enter the verification code that the victim should have memorized. Therefore, it is important to enable this feature and memorize the security code.

Prize Draw Fraud

  • Another fraud model is the prize draw mode. The way it works is by calling or contacting the victim with a message that he or she has won a prize and the information can be checked on the website whose address has been included.
  • Actually, the website included in the message is a fake website. If the victim is not observant, they will be influenced and follow the instructions given by the fraudster.
  • It could be that the victim’s telephone number is displayed on the list of winners on the fake website. Thus, the victim will feel that he or she really won the lottery because his or her cellphone number is on the website.
  • After that, usually the fraudster will ask to transfer a certain amount of money to redeem the prize on the grounds of paying prize tax.
  • Being vigilant and always thinking clearly when receiving any news is the right step to anticipate this type of fraud.
  • Usually this lottery fraud, in practice the fraudster always tries to provide psychological penetration to the victim.
  • If the victim is not vigilant, too happy because they will get a prize and cannot think clearly, then the victim will easily fall for the seduction of the fraudster who controls them behind the telephone guide.

Check Fraudulent Websites? Here’s How!

For those of you who have been involved in the world of websites, or follow and like the development of information technology, you will usually easily know which websites are genuine and which are fraudulent websites.

There are several ways to check for fraudulent websites that you can do. Curious about how? Here are some of them:

1. Know the Domain or URL

  • The domain name or URL of a website is a unique name, so that one domain is definitely different from another.
  • Thus, to check for fraudulent websites, you can check the domain name. The domain of a company or big brand is usually popular and well-known to the public.
  • For example, a bank website, Bank Mandiri for example. Bank Mandiri has a website with the extension co.id because the bank is an official company. So the domain name is bankmandiri.co.id, not the others.
  • Then, is the XYZ domain a fraud? It can be ascertained that a company uses a TLD domain when building a website.
  • If there is a website that claims to be a company website and uses the XYZ domain extension, then it is almost certain that it is a fake website.
  • However, domains with the XYZ extension are not all fraudulent websites. Many bloggers use their domain extension names using XYZ, because domains with this extension are affordable.
  • So you need to be observant in this regard. For more details, you can learn about domain names in the article about what a domain is.

2. Check SSL Certificate

  • The next easy way is to check the presence of SSL on the website. Trusted websites will usually have an SSL certificate.
  • The sign is that there is a padlock image on the left side of the address bar in the browser. If you type the domain name in the browser, then after loading the padlock image will appear.
  • Another sign is that there is the letter S in the domain name after http. For example, the Bank Mandiri website, when you enter the domain name correctly, the full address will appear as follows: https://bankmandiri.co.id/.
  • The S after http is a sign that you are safe (save) when accessing the website.
  • SSL certificates have many levels. Between bank websites, marketplaces, and personal websites have different SSL certificates. This is related to the level of security required by their users.

3. Finding Who Is Information

To check who owns the domain name, you can use the who is service. By using who is, you can track domain ownership. Usually the information you will find is:

  • Where the domain is registered
  • The identity of the domain owner such as name, email address, and phone number of the domain owner
  • Date the domain was registered
  • Date the domain expires
  • The IP address of the domain owner

You can get this when the domain owner does not protect his domain name.

However, if he uses a trusted domain service provider, the domain name will be protected and the identity of the domain owner will be transferred to a third party. Therefore, make sure you are vigilant when buying a cheap domain.

4. Pay attention to the contents of the website

If you are observant, you will easily know which website is genuine and which is a fraudulent website from the content of the website. A website that is done professionally will certainly have quality content.

You can check the quality of the content from the style of language used, the layout of the website, and maybe the existence of existing features.

However, usually fraudsters who are already skilled, especially those who cheat using phishing methods will build websites with a really similar appearance.

That’s why many internet users are fooled. To overcome this, you can check the domain name or the existence of an SSL certificate.

Examples of Fake Websites

It is very easy to recognize which website is genuine and which is fake. Even for those of you who are laymen. Let’s take the following two websites as an example:

  • http://pemenang-telkomsel.weebly.com
  • https://www.telkomsel.com

From the domain name alone, the website that has the domain name http://pemenang-telkomsel.weebly.com is a fraudulent website. How could a company as big as Telkomsel use a free website issued by Weebly?

Telkomsel’s official domain is https://www.telkomsel.com where the domain name uses the .com extension which is one of the Top Level Domains. For other official websites, sometimes they use the .co.id extension.

In addition, if you open and access both website links, you will see two very different displays. The genuine one certainly has various menu features and has a professional appearance. While for the fake website, of course, the appearance looks mediocre.

Not to mention the SSL certificate whose sign you can check in the address bar. For the official website, there must be a padlock sign and uses the additional letter s for http. While the fraudulent website does not use this.

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