You can run a free scam website check with F‑Secure Online Shopping Checker anytime you need to. Just type in or paste a web address or a link, and the tool checks the website safety for you.

If you don’t want to manually scan a URL each time you shop online, you can also get F‑Secure Total for your device. It runs a scam website check for you automatically every time you enter a shopping site.

The internet is full of scam websites that criminals use to steal your money and personal details. While stealing money is obviously profitable for criminals, they can also profit from your personal details. For example, they can sell them to other criminals, or use them for fraud and identity theft.

While losing money is bad, stolen personal details can be used even years later for example to take loans in your name. And not only is fixing the issue costly, but it can also take a lot of time and cause immense stress. Checking website safety is an effortless step in preventing criminals from stealing your money and personal data.

When you scan a URL, this unique tool checks if it’s safe. The results are based on millions of thoroughly analyzed websites. Here are some of the things that are analyzed:

• Technical aspects such as website popularity, how long it has been operational, redirections, backlinks, server information, search engine blocking, SSL certificate, and many others.

• Reviews and comments on review sites and social media.

• External data such as DNS filters and trust data gathered by international organizations.

• Website security and site actions analyzed by security experts.

Based on the extensive analyses, this website checker displays a score for the shopping sites. The higher the score, the safer the site.

Most legit web shops care about the technical performance of their site and will not likely raise any other red flags either, so they will get rated well. And because the results are based also on external data, reviews and comments, and analysis done by security experts, you will get a very based result.

On the other hand, scam websites are often very new. While it is easy to create a website, taking care of all the technical details that this website checker looks into requires time and resources that scammers don’t usually have or want to use. Because of the multi-layered analysis, the score gives an accurate result of website safety. And while a suspicious site may not always be malicious, there are very good reasons to avoid it.

Are you an owner of a shop that gets the All good result with this tool? Gain your customers’ trust by showing your shop’s result on your page with the following badge made by F‑Secure. Download the badge and upload it to your server.

Then, use this code snippet to display the badge on your own page:

<a href="https://www.f-secure.com/en/online-shopping-checker?url=[SITE URL]">
	<img alt="Check out our shop at F-Secure" src="[IMAGE URL]">
</a>

In the above snippet, replace [SITE URL] with your shop’s URL, e.g. f-secure.com.

Then replace [IMAGE URL] with the image URL on your server.

Now, when your customer clicks the badge to check the reputation of your shop, your shop’s address will be prefilled in the Online Shopping Checker automatically. This way any doubters can ensure the safety of your shop themselves quickly and easily.

Scams can be hard to detect, but there are some telltale signs you can check for when deciding if a website is legit or not. If you scan the URL with this a free website checker, but are still unsure whether it’s safe, here are some things you can look for.

• Check the URL. Some scam websites look the same as real trusted stores. However, their web addresses (aka URLs) can include miniscule one-character differences that set them apart from these trusted stores. Check the URL to spot these differences, and any other weird details there might be.

• Look for reviews online. What others have said in social media or review sites can save you a lot of trouble. However, keep in mind that reviews can be fabricated. If reviews are very short and excessively written by generic profile names such as John117, be on your guard.

• Look for contact information. When you check if a shopping website is legit, their contact information can tell a lot. For example, if they do not have any or it is very difficult to find, something is off. Trusted online shopping sites would not hide such information. The same goes for their return policy.

• Beware slashed prices and timed offers. Scam shopping websites lure us to buy as fast as possible. They can offer ludicrous prices and for a very limited time (for example 5 minutes), so that you act before you carefully think it through or check website safety in any way. While trusted online shopping sites can use similar tactics, they are excessively used by scammers.

• Pay with credit card or PayPal. This tip will not help you spot a scam. But if all else fails and you happen to fall for one, it’s a lot easier to get your money back this way than when paying with a bank transfer or other direct payment methods.

Yes, this website is safe to use. This free website checker is brought to you by F‑Secure, a Finnish cyber security company with 35 years of experience. F‑Secure is listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki and has around 30 million active subscribers. F‑Secure products have won multiple awards globally from independent testing organizations. Along with our other free tools, this website is safe to use as many times as you want to.

This free shopping website checker works only when you check is a website safe to buy from. Checking website safety for other sites will not give you relevant results.

While this tool can already give you safety information about millions of shopping sites, there are millions and millions more. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet reviewed every existing shop online. We are doing our best to get the safety information about more shops. You can help us in the process and get the shop you were checking reviewed: submit the site for our review.

Most likely this shopping site has either not yet been analyzed, or it has been wrongfully flagged as suspicious. Please submit the site for our review.

Yes, you can check link safety with this free website checker also without opening the link. Just copy the link and paste it to this tool. Then click Check website safety and the tool checks if the link is safe to open. However, if it doesn’t lead to a shopping site, it will not give you relevant information.

Based on the security score, this tool categorizes shopping sites into one of the following groups:

• Safe

• Unsure

• Suspicious

• Very suspicious

• Unsafe

We advise to avoid shops with lower score, as these sites are more likely to be scams or otherwise dangerous.

In some cases, a shop that’s technically safe lands in the unsure category. This may be because this tool looks into numerous aspects, including user reviews. While an unsure or suspicious site isn’t always outright malicious, negative reviews and feedback may indicate that there are other reasons why consumers should be conscious and careful when shopping in the site.

Such reasons could be for example poor quality of products, bad communication or customer service, broken or faulty goods when received, etc. However, this tool does not state the reason for negative comments.

Yes. The security scores are based on thorough analysis on multiple security factors. (See question How does this shopping website checker work? for more information.) The analyses are impartial and not against or in favor of anyone.

F‑Secure does not collect payments from shop owners to display a higher security score and cannot be bribed or threatened to change the rating. However, sometimes a shopping site may be wrongfully labeled. If you think this is the case, please submit the site for our review, so that our threat protection team can analyze it again.