Guide
Is this website legit? How to check before you pay
Fake stores are cheap to build and convincing. Five minutes of checking beats weeks of chasing a refund.
Updated 9 July 20267 min readBy AngusPart of Online safety tips
Asking is this website legit before you hand over money or details is one of the best habits you can build online. Fake stores, lookalike login pages and too-good-to-be-true offers are cheap to create, heavily advertised, and designed to pass a quick glance.
You do not need special tools to check. You need five minutes and the short list below, in order. If a site fails any two of these checks, walk away.
1. Check the business behind the site is real
A legitimate Australian business will show its legal name and ABN, usually in the footer, on the contact page or in the terms. Take that ABN and look it up on the free ABN Lookup register at abr.business.gov.au. You are checking three things: the ABN exists, it is active, and the registered name matches the business the site claims to be. No ABN anywhere, or an ABN that belongs to an unrelated entity, is a serious warning sign for an Australian store.
Good to know
- An ABN on the page proves nothing by itself, scammers copy real ones. It only counts if it matches the business name on the register.
2. Read the domain name carefully
Scammers rely on you skimming the address bar. Read the actual domain slowly, the part just before the first single slash. Look for swapped letters, added words like outlet or sale, a different ending such as .shop or .top instead of .com.au, and brand names sitting in front of a domain you do not recognise.
One more thing the padlock does not mean: a padlock or https only means your connection is encrypted. It says nothing about who is on the other end. Fake sites have padlocks too.
3. Test the contact details
Legitimate businesses are contactable in more than one way. A real street address, an Australian phone number that answers, and an email on the business domain are all good signs. A contact form as the only option is a bad one.
- Search the street address. Does it exist, and is it plausibly this business rather than a random house or a serviced office with no connection?
- If real money is at stake, ring the number and ask something specific about the product.
- Search for the business independently and compare: does the site you found through an ad match the site you find through a search?
4. Know the signs of a fake store
Fake stores share a pattern you can learn to spot in seconds.
- Prices dramatically below every other retailer, on brands that never discount that deep.
- Countdown timers, only 2 left warnings and other pressure to buy right now.
- Payment by bank transfer, gift cards or crypto only. Card payments can be disputed, which is exactly why fake stores avoid them.
- A site that is days or weeks old, stock photos everywhere, and no real presence anywhere else online.
5. Check what others say, in the right places
Do not rely on testimonials published on the site itself, they are part of the site. Search the store name together with words like scam, review or complaint, and look at independent review platforms. Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au publishes current scam warnings, and a search there costs nothing.
Good to know
- A brand new store with a burst of five star reviews posted in the same week is its own warning sign.
6. If you already paid a suspect site
Act quickly and do not be embarrassed, these sites fool careful people every day. Contact your bank straight away and ask about disputing or charging back the payment, especially if you paid by card. Then work through our step-by-step guide on what to do if you have been scammed, which covers securing your accounts, IDCARE and reporting to Scamwatch and ReportCyber.