As the Holiday Season draws nearer, more and more people will be shopping online. In addition to the usual advice offered to those who might be shopping online for the first time [buy stuff only from reputable sites like Amazon] there's this tip this tip which everyone can find useful. Scammers will leave you no contact information or they'll make it hard to find it. When you visit an online store, look first for their contact information and when you find it call customer service, talk the person at the other end then do some reverse address lookup. This should get you the answers you need. Have any of you ever called customer service to find out if the business is legit?
What I usually do is do an internet search for the number and see if it comes up with any scam alerts, because scammers can use forwarding and mask numbers now. I also check the website domain to see if it has been flipped and how long it has been owned. Any domain that is a business should be renewed well before it's due to expire, anything with a few months to go will always be suspect, although I did know I poorly run company who forgot to renew their domain, but they had so many staff and no real organization. The problem is, some now outsource this to homeworkers, so you can't be guaranteed that the person actually will be able to help you. I would always email a question and see the response, and to see if it came from a verified email account and also to check that the person is real.
