Signs of a Fake Online Store (and How to Check One in a Minute)

Which signs indicate a fake online store?

The signs that indicate a fake online store are about identity and money, not design: a young domain, no traceable company, prices that make no economic sense and payment methods that cannot be reversed. A polished theme, a padlock and trust badges are cheap to copy and say little.

How to check an online store in about a minute

1. 01Safe Browsing (10 seconds). Paste the address into Google’s Safe Browsing site status. Flagged as dangerous: leave.
2. 02Domain age (15 seconds). Type the domain into ICANN Lookup and read the registration date. Registered last month but claiming years of trading: leave.
3. 03Legal notice (20 seconds). Find the company name, registration number and address in the footer, the terms or the legal notice. None at all: a serious warning sign, and a breach of EU rules for a European shop.
4. 04Checkout (15 seconds). Go to the payment step without paying. No card option, or a discount for bank transfer: leave.

If the shop passes, spend two more minutes on the company: look it up in the registry of its country (Companies House in the UK, the Annuaire des Entreprises in France, the state register in the US) and search its name with “scam” or “complaint”, as the FTC suggests. The full method is in how to check if a website is legit, and the shopping case is covered in is this online store legit?.

How common are fake online stores?

Very common, and growing. In the UK, UK Finance recorded 175,809 purchase scam cases in 2025, a record, with £118.1 million lost; purchase scams were 71% of all authorised push payment scam cases. UK Finance describes the mechanism: the victim pays in advance for goods that never arrive, usually after being persuaded to use a bank transfer rather than a platform’s secure payment.

In the US, the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report lists 56,478 non-payment and non-delivery complaints with $503.4 million lost. Those figures include marketplace sellers and fake shops alike.

The domain and the address bar

Most fake stores are registered shortly before they go live. A domain lookup shows the registration date; since 28 January 2025, RDAP is the authoritative source for generic domains (ICANN). As a reference, the registration record of amazon.com shows 1 November 1994. A two-month-old domain is not proof of fraud, but it removes the main reason to trust a shop you have never heard of: a track record.

Read the address itself. Fake stores imitating brands use extra words (“outlet”, “sale”, “official”), new endings (.shop, .store, .top) and small spelling changes. If you came from an ad, type the brand’s address yourself and compare.

Prices, stock and urgency

Real retailers work on margins. A store selling current-season branded trainers, power tools or game consoles at a fraction of the price, with every size in stock, is selling something it does not have. Compare the price with two or three well-known retailers: if the gap is huge and the shop is unknown, stop there.

Fake urgency supports the price: countdown timers that restart when you reload the page, “only 2 left” on every product, pop-ups claiming someone in your town just bought the item. Their job is to make you pay before you check.

The company behind the shop

A legitimate store names the company that sells to you. In the EU, Article 5 of the e-Commerce Directive requires online sellers to show their name, geographic address, email and, where registered, their trade register number. Look for it under “legal notice”, “imprint”, “mentions légales” or the terms of sale.

• The company should exist in a registry and be active, with the same name and address.
• The returns address should be consistent with the country the shop claims to ship from.
• The contact page should give more than a form: an address, a phone number, an email on the shop’s own domain.
• For a big brand’s “outlet”, the brand’s own website should link to it. If it does not, it is not official.

Copied photos, generated text and fake reviews

Fake stores are assembled quickly, so their content is borrowed. Run a product photo through Google Lens or TinEye: an image that comes from the brand’s official catalogue, or from dozens of other unknown shops, suggests a template store. The “about us” story and the product descriptions are increasingly AI-generated; our guide on how to tell if a website is AI-generated shows what to look for, and the AI website checker scores a site’s texts and images.

Reviews on the shop’s own pages are the easiest thing to fake. Look for reviews on independent sites and read the pattern: many complaints describing parcels that never arrived, tracking numbers that lead nowhere, or cheap items received instead of the product ordered. See how to spot AI-generated reviews.

Payment: the sign that matters most

The FTC advises never paying an online seller with gift cards, wire transfers, payment apps or cryptocurrency, because the money is hard to recover. It recommends paying by credit card, which gives you dispute rights if you are billed for something you never received; write to your card issuer within 60 days of the first bill showing the charge.

A fake store often shows card logos at the top of the page, then declares cards “temporarily unavailable” at checkout, or offers 10% off for paying by bank transfer. That last step is the scam.

Fake store or just a slow, low-quality shop?

Not every disappointing shop is fake. Many small stores ship from overseas suppliers, take weeks to deliver and sell products that look better in the photos than in your hands. That is a bad deal, not necessarily a scam, and the remedy is different: a refund request under the shop’s policy and, if it refuses, a card dispute.

The identity checks separate the two before you buy: a shop with a registered company, a legal notice and a domain with some history may still disappoint you, but it can be held to account.

Already paid a fake online store? What to do now

1. 01Contact your card issuer or bank immediately: ask for a chargeback (card) or a payment recall (transfer).
2. 02Save everything: the address, screenshots of the product page and checkout, the order confirmation, emails, the transaction reference.
3. 03Do not pay any “customs fee” or “insurance” the shop asks for afterwards to release the parcel.
4. 04Report the site to Google Safe Browsing and to the authorities of your country, listed in how to report a scam.

How our Business Check reads an online store

The Business Check reads up to 12 pages of the shop, including its legal notice and terms, extracts the company name, identifiers and address, and looks the company up in official registries where they are available (France, the UK, US public companies, LEI holders). It adds the domain’s age, Google Safe Browsing and a summary of what search results say about the shop, each with a link. Large, widely used shops and known organisations are recognised as such, and complaints about them are shown for information rather than counted as a red flag.

For marketplaces, the platform can be legitimate while a seller on it is not: see marketplaces and e-commerce. And a score is an indication: a low score means “check further before you pay”, never “this is a scam”.

Frequently asked questions