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Get startedMoving country means buying from shops you have never heard of. The furniture site, the phone reseller, the letting agency, the ticket marketplace everyone local seems to use.
At home you had a sense of which names were real. Abroad that instinct is gone, and it takes a year or two to rebuild. In the meantime you are making decisions with no baseline.
These checks give you one. Most take under a minute and none require any expertise. Together they answer the question far better than a gut feeling about how the site looks.
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A Fraud Check You Can Run in Sixty Seconds
Start here. These are fast, and they eliminate most bad sites before you have invested any time or attention in the decision.
Run them in order. The first three cost almost nothing and remove the majority of bad sites. The slower checks further down are then only ever spent on candidates that already look plausible.
None of them is conclusive alone. What matters is the pattern: one oddity means little, three together mean you have your answer.
Read the domain character by character
Look at the address itself, not the page. Swapped letters, extra hyphens and unusual endings are the oldest trick that still works, because nobody reads addresses closely. A site imitating a known retailer will be one character away from the real one. Say it out loud if you are unsure; the ear catches what the eye skips. Bookmark the real site once you have found it, and use the bookmark from then on. That removes the check entirely for every future visit.
Check how old the domain is
A shop claiming years of trading, on a domain registered six weeks ago, has answered the question. Free lookup tools show the creation date in seconds. Recent registration is not damning by itself, since new businesses exist, but paired with anything else here it settles matters. Look at the expiry date too. Domains registered for a single year, with no history, are cheap to abandon once they have served their purpose.
Look for a physical address
A real company operating in a country has an address in that country. No address at all is a genuine warning. So is one that turns out to be a virtual office or a residential flat when you check it on a map. Copy the address into a map and look at the street view. A warehouse, a shopfront or an office block is reassuring. A field, a post box or an address that does not resolve at all is the opposite.
Find a phone number and call it
Not to interrogate anyone. Just to see whether it rings, whether a person answers, and whether they sound like the business the site describes. A shop with no contact route other than a web form has removed the easiest way to verify it, and that is usually deliberate. Chat widgets do not count. They can be staffed by anyone, from anywhere, and they leave you no record.
Check the prices against reality
If everything is forty percent below what everyone else charges, that is the product being sold. Compare three items against two known retailers. Consistent, dramatic underpricing across a whole catalogue is not a sale, it is a hook. Genuine clearances are narrow. They cover a few lines, for a stated reason, for a limited period. A whole shop at half price is not a clearance.
Look at the writing
Not for perfect grammar; plenty of honest local businesses write imperfect English, and holding that against them is unfair. Look instead for text that reads as though it was pasted from elsewhere. Product descriptions that contradict each other, or a returns page written about a different kind of shop. That last one is common, because policy pages get copied wholesale from templates and nobody edits them.
Search the name with one extra word
Put the company name into a search engine followed by the word scam, or review, or refund. Read past the first page of results, because promoted content and the company's own material fill the top. Fraud forums and consumer boards surface fast this way. Add the country name if the brand trades in several. Complaints are usually specific to one market and one operator.
Checking the Company Behind the Site
A website is easy to build. A company is harder to fake, because companies leave records that a weekend project does not.
That asymmetry is the useful part. Anyone can copy a shopfront in an afternoon. Nobody can retroactively create four years of filings, a VAT registration and a set of staff who existed before last month.
This is the layer most people skip, and it is where the clearest answers live.
Search the national business register
Almost every country publishes a searchable register of registered companies. Look up the name, the company number and the incorporation date, then check all three against what the site claims. A retailer with no registration in the country it claims to operate from is finished at this step. Registers are free in most of Europe and the US, and searching one takes about thirty seconds once you have found it.
Match the registered name to the trading name
Sites often trade under a brand that differs from the registered entity, which is normal. What matters is that the legal name appears somewhere, usually in the terms or the footer. A site that never names a legal entity anywhere is avoiding it on purpose. Look in the terms, the privacy policy and the footer. Consumer law in most countries requires it to appear somewhere.
Check the VAT or tax number
European sites display a VAT number, and it can be validated against the official EU checker in seconds. A missing number on a site selling to European customers is unusual. An invalid one is decisive. The EU VIES checker validates numbers instantly and for free. It is the single most conclusive test on this page for a European seller.
Look for real people
Named staff, a founder with a professional profile that predates the site, photographs that are not stock. Reverse image search a team photo. Finding the same faces on three unrelated company websites answers the question immediately. Stock photography is not proof of fraud on its own. Plenty of small businesses use it. It stops being innocent when combined with a missing address and a new domain.
Read reviews on platforms the company does not control
On-site testimonials prove nothing, since the site chooses them. Independent review platforms, marketplace feedback and local consumer forums are worth more. Look at the shape of the reviews as well as the score: fifty five-star reviews in one week is a pattern, not a reputation. Read the negative ones properly. How a company answers a complaint tells you more than any number of positive reviews.
Check how long the social accounts have existed
An established retailer has years of ordinary posts, including dull ones. An account created two months ago, posting only products, is part of the shopfront. Engagement that does not match the follower count says the same thing.
See whether anyone local has heard of it
Ask in a student or expat group in that city. Local knowledge is the fastest fraud check available to you, and it is the one thing you genuinely lack when you arrive. Someone will usually have bought from them, or know why nobody does. Our housing guide makes the same point about landlords: make sure you can really trust the website or the person you are dealing with.
Reading the Payment and Delivery Terms
The payment page is where a site's real intentions become visible, because fraud needs a payment method it cannot be forced to reverse.
This is also the point where people stop checking, because they have already decided. Deciding is precisely when the last checks matter most, and the payment screen is where the evidence is clearest.
If everything else looked fine and this section looks wrong, believe this section.
Insist on a payment method you can dispute
Cards carry chargeback rights. Bank transfers, money transfer services, crypto and gift cards do not. A shop that accepts only irreversible methods has chosen that deliberately, and no explanation makes it acceptable. Discounts offered for paying by transfer are the version of this that catches careful people. The discount is the cost of removing your protection.
Watch for a payment page that changes host
Legitimate checkouts hand you to a recognised payment provider, and the address bar shows it. Being asked to transfer to a personal account is a hard stop, even at the final step. So is a company name unrelated to the shop. Check the name on the payment screen against the name on the site. A mismatch at that point is worth abandoning the order over.
Read the returns policy before buying
A real policy names a timeframe, a process and an address to return things to. Vague reassurance is not a policy. Check who pays return postage, and whether returns go to the country you are in or somewhere far more expensive to post to. Buying platforms that hold payment until delivery are safer for exactly this reason, as our guide to buying safely sets out.
Check the delivery promise against the country
A site claiming next-day delivery in a country where nobody manages that is describing a fantasy. Compare the promise against what established retailers there actually offer. Delivery estimates that never update after purchase are a common pattern once payment has cleared.
Look for hidden costs before the last step
Customs charges, handling fees and currency conversion appear late on many sites, and on some that is the business model. Take one item to the final screen without confirming, and see what the total became. For anything shipped from outside your country, assume customs and handling will be charged on arrival unless the site states otherwise clearly.
Never pay outside the platform
If you found a seller on a marketplace, pay through it. Moving to a direct transfer removes every protection the platform provides, which is precisely why the request gets made. The reason offered is usually the platform's fees. Those fees are what you are paying for protection.
Treat urgency on the payment page as data
Countdown timers, three-left warnings and expiring baskets are designed to stop you doing the checks on this page. Some honest shops use them too, which is why urgency is a prompt to slow down rather than proof of anything. Reload the page and see whether the timer resets. A countdown that starts again has told you what it is.
A Fraud Check for Messages and Links
Most bad sites are not found by searching. They arrive in a message, and the link does the rest of the work.
That changes what you are defending against. Searching gives you time to think. A message arrives while you are doing something else, usually on a phone, where every check here is harder to run.
The difference between phishing and spam matters here. Spam wants your attention; phishing wants your credentials or your money, and it will impersonate someone you trust to get them.
Hover before you click
The visible text and the actual destination are different things. On a laptop, hover to see where a link really goes. On a phone, press and hold to preview. This one habit prevents a large share of what follows. If the destination is a shortened link you cannot read, treat that as a reason to go to the site yourself instead.
Reach the site yourself instead
If a message claims your bank, your university or a shop needs something, go there directly through your own bookmark or a search. Never through the message. If the request is genuine it will be waiting for you when you arrive. Nothing legitimate is ever lost by taking the long route. That is a useful thing to know in the moment.
Check the sender address, not the display name
The name shown is chosen by the sender. The address is not. Expand it and read it properly, especially on a phone, where the address is hidden by default and the trick works best. Look at what comes after the last dot as well. That is the part that identifies the real owner of the address.
Be sceptical of anything that creates a deadline
Account suspensions, expiring refunds and final notices exist to remove the pause in which you would check. A real institution gives you time, and usually contacts you more than one way. Banks in particular will never ask you to move money to keep it safe. That specific request is always fraud.
Check a suspicious message before you act on it
Bitdefender Scamio lets you paste a message or a link and get an assessment before you reply, which is useful exactly when something feels off but you cannot articulate why. That feeling usually arrives before the reasoning does, and acting on it early costs nothing.
Do not open attachments you did not expect
An invoice you were not waiting for, a delivery note for a parcel you did not order, a document from a stranger. Unexpected attachments are a delivery mechanism. The same care applies to files you are asked to open in a browser tool. Our guide on when to handle files offline covers the trade-off.
Assume messages about money are the target
Anything touching a payment, a refund, a deposit or a salary deserves a second route of confirmation. Call the number on your card, or on the official site, rather than the one in the message. That is where the losses are, so that is where the effort goes on both sides.
Conclusion
A fraud check is not a single test. It is a handful of small ones that each mean little alone and a great deal together.
Read the domain. Look up the company in the register. Find a real address and a working number, and refuse any payment method you cannot dispute. If a site survives all four, it is probably what it says it is. If it fails two, the price does not matter.
The four are deliberately cheap. None of them needs a tool you do not have, an account you must create, or knowledge you do not already possess. That is the point: a check you will not actually run is worth nothing, however clever it is.
Start small when you are unsure. A first order of twenty euros tells you whether delivery, packaging and customer service are real. It costs far less than finding out on a purchase that matters.
The instinct you had at home was built from years of local knowledge. Abroad, these checks stand in for that while you rebuild it, and you will need them less each year.
Keep a short list of the local retailers you have already verified. That list becomes your new instinct faster than you expect.
The purpose of this guide was to help moved-abroad 18 to 35s keep their devices, data, money and identity safe while they live their whole lives online in a new country. To help you on this journey, College Life has partnered with Bitdefender to make your life easier. Join College Life Club for free and start taking advantage of this today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fastest way to check if a website is legit?
Read the domain carefully, look up when it was registered, and search the company name alongside the word scam. Those three take about a minute and remove most bad sites before you have spent any real attention.
Does a padlock in the address bar mean a site is safe?
No. It means the connection is encrypted, not that the business is honest. Fraudulent sites obtain the same certificates, so the padlock says nothing about who is on the other end. Certificates are free and automated now, which is good for the web overall and means the padlock stopped being a trust signal years ago.
What is the difference between phishing and spam?
Spam is unwanted bulk messaging that wants your attention. Phishing impersonates someone you trust in order to take credentials or money, which makes it far more dangerous and far more targeted.
Is it safe to buy from a site I have never heard of?
It can be, and abroad you will have to. Verify the company in the national register and insist on a payment method with dispute rights. Start with a small order rather than an expensive one.
The alternative, buying only from names you recognise, quietly limits you to international chains and costs more. Local retailers are usually the better option once you can tell which ones are real.
What should I do if I have already paid a fraudulent site?
Contact your bank or card provider the same day, because dispute windows are time-limited. Keep the order confirmation and every message, then report it to the national consumer or fraud body. If you paid by card you often have more time than you expect. The claim is far easier to make while the evidence is still in front of you.