Scammers are everywhere on the internet, masquerading to obtain your personal information. Many social media users or website creators pose as government entities or other authorities to offer you things that seem too good to be true or use scare tactics, like fake warnings about things like late fines or missed court dates, to prompt online users into sharing personal information.
In an era of misinformation, how do we know when a website is real?
One way is to research a website’s domain. A domain name is the part of a website address preceded by .com, .net or other popular suffixes. It’s essentially just the base website name without the “https://” and “www.”
“Measuring a website’s credibility might take time,” said Jordan Lyle, a senior reporter for Snopes.com. “Young journalists should know their stuff when it comes to domains and redirects.”
Snopes.com is one of the internet’s oldest fact-checking websites. He has more than 25 years of experience in managing websites and knows how to determine whether a site is legit.
Investigating internet sites
Alex Kasprak, a former investigative journalist at Snopes.com, has conducted numerous investigations using information gleaned from Domain Name Server (DNS) registers. DNS registers contain information about a particular website, its URL and IP address — a unique number on every tech device you might use.
With the information he found, Kasprak has been able to uncover unreported connections between news websites and their funders and between scammers and their beneficiaries.
“DNS tools are a great first step into any investigation that involves the identity of people behind websites or possible undisclosed connections between them,” Kasprak said.
Taking the expertise from these two investigative reporters, News Decoder has compiled the toolkit below to help perform a credible and comprehensive examination for publishing.
Are there red flags?
Scam websites have certain red flags. They might lack legal documentation, for example, including terms of service and privacy policies.
Another sign is sloppiness and mistakes. Try skimming through various pages on the site to look for typos, glaringly incorrect information, vague contact information, skewed formatting and other things that seem unprofessional.
Lyle said that a website that promotes a specific giveaway might lack any biographical or contact information about the people promoting the product or offer.
“Sometimes, scammers will include a mailing address that, upon searching for it, turns out to be a fulfillment center or a business that allows LLCs to anonymously register with that business’ physical office as a virtual address, shielding the scam’s operators from being identified,” Lyle said.
Conduct a website domain search.
Kasprak said that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) operates as a phonebook for the internet.
“In this analogy, the phone numbers are Internet Protocol (IP) addresses — a string of numbers formatted like 0.0.0.0 — and the ‘names’ are the actual domain names [e.g. news-decoder.com] to which those IP addresses are associated,” Kasprak said. “Like a human with a phone, domain names can change IP addresses several times.”
The first step for tracing the origins of a website involves what’s known as a “WHOIS” search — a specific type of domain search listing information about the creation of a domain.
WHOIS is a public database that lists several contact numbers, names or organisations associated with a given IP address or domain name. Many people these days use services that allow one to register a website anonymously, making the results have limited value. Older records, or those from some non-Western nations, often include actual names or corporate contacts, explained Kasprak.
A WHOIS search, which can be conducted at godaddy.com/whois, queries the public WHOIS database.
Lyle said he often looks at the date a person officially purchased and registered a domain name.. “For example, in the case of researching potential scams, if a domain name was recently registered, that’s a red flag indicating the website might be untrustworthy and could confirm the potential scam as legitimate,” he said.
Look at the site history.
Another great tool to pair with “WHOIS” searches is the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. When performing a “WHOIS” search on godaddy.com/whois, check to see when the domain was created. That year should match the Wayback Machine’s records of creation date, as well as show if the website had other owners with completely different websites.
“Also, know that the domain information listed in a WHOIS search might be the most recent data, but not the original data,” Lyle said. “Check the Wayback Machine to see if the website existed long ago in another form.”
Scammers might also create fake domains to pretend to be a legitimate business, adjusting the URL link slightly to trick users. A fake Home Depot ad on Facebook, for example, didn’t lead to homedepot.com when clicked through, but instead to “h0medepott.com”; an “o” was changed to a zero and a second “t” was added to the end of the URL.
“Scammers have created fake domains almost matching the genuine business domain for banks, as well as for USPS, for example,” Lyle said. “Sometimes, scammers won’t even bother to create similar domain names and instead simply rely on people not looking at the URL.”
Some scammers go so far as to copy the web design of a company — logo and all — to trick consumers. These types of scam websites often offer giveaways that seem too good to be true, such as free money, super inexpensive offers for goods or services or non-existent programs for student loan forgiveness.
“Of course, the biggest red flag would be an offer that seems too good to be true,” Lyle said. “If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. And I will go a step further: In 2025, if an offer seems too good to be true, it is. Avoid it.”
For journalists all this should becoming standard practice when using information off the internet in news stories.
“Basically, you want to make sure you did everything you could with your research before publishing your article,” Lyle said. “And that you attempted to go above and beyond expectations other publishers might have for their articles’ comprehensive credibility.”
Questions to consider:
1. What are some common red flags that a website might be fake or trying to scam you?
2. What is a DNS register and how is it useful to identify a potential scam?
3. If a friend sent you an unknown link, what steps would you take before clicking? How would you explain your choice to click or not?
