How to spot a fake website!

We are regularly targeted and unwittingly channelled into following links to fake websites believing they’re the real McCoy. Scam site are primarily trying to harvest our financial credentials and personal data, this information can then be sold on the dark web, used to hijack our identities or steal our hard earnt funds.

In this article we have been chatting to Techspert Furqan Ashraf, who publishes articles such as “How to Check a Link Before You Click It” which was written specifically with The Scam Hound in mind.

Furqan explains: “This is the one trick scammers use most, so it’s worth learning properly.”

“A web address is read from right to left. The part that matters is the name sitting just before the ending (like .com or .co.uk). That’s who really owns the website."

These are all real banking websites and our site as examples:

www.Lloydsbank.com (Real owner the bit before .com)

www.bank.Barclays.co.uk (Real owner the bit before .co.uk)

www.HSBC.co.uk (Real owner the bit before .co.uk)

www.TheScamHound.co.uk (Real owner the bit before .co.uk)

Here is the interesting bit, the following sites look real because they start with a bank you know and trust but they’re not safe, the owner is read right to left.

www.Lloydsbank.co.uk.secure-help.com (Real owner: Secure-help.com)

This is what Google had to say: ⚠️ STOP, www.Lloydsbank.co.uk.secure-help.com is not an official Lloyds Bank website and is a malicious phishing link.

• Real Domain: The true root domain here is secure-help.com, not lloydsbank.co.uk.

• Domain Spoofing: Scammers put www.Lloydsbank.co.uk at the front of a fake web address to trick you into thinking it belongs to the bank.

www.Bank.Barclays.co.uk.safe-login.co.uk (Real owner Safe-login.co.uk)

www.HSBC.co.uk.login-secure-assist.com (Real owner Login-secure-assist.com)

Here is another example of how scammers use well known brands to create a convincing site.

www.secure-bank-Barclays-login.com (using the words secure and login combined with a bank we trust seems convincing but this is not safe either. Real owner is Secure-Bank-Barclays-login.) This is what Google had to say:

No, www.secure-bank-Barclays-login.com is not an official Barclays website and is almost certainly a phishing scam.

The above websites do not exists, do not put them into your search bar in case a scammer coincidentally creates them after this article is published.

To make things a little more complicated start at the right side of the address and look for the first single slash (/) or question mark (?). Ignore everything after it, as that is locating a specific page or tracking code.

Examples:

www.TheScamHound.co.uk/news Ignore everything after the /. The /news indicates our “news” page rather than real name.

www.TheScamHound.co.uk.newsletter-secure-login.com FAKE (Real name Newsletter-secure-login.com)

www.TheScamHound.co.uk/newsletter-archive REAL Ignore everything after the / that directs to our page Newsletter archive.

This article has been created with thanks to Furqan Ashraf. This article is for information purposes only and is not intended as financial advice.

Also referenced: Learn to read URLs to spot phishing scams, by Interlaced.