The check-before-you-pay checklist
How to tell if an online store is legit before you pay
You saw a deal in a feed from a store you have never heard of. The price looks almost right, the photos look real, and the checkout is one tap away. This page is the ten checks worth doing in the minutes you have — the same signals a careful shopper (or a trust report) would look at, in plain words. Written 7 October 2026.
Start with the price
A brand-new store selling a 900-dollar phone for 120 dollars is not a deal; it is bait. Ask what the item costs at three known retailers. If the discount only exists at a store nobody has heard of, treat the whole listing as unproven until the rest of this list says otherwise.
Look at the domain name itself
Read the address character by character. Scam stores lean on lookalike brands: an extra letter, a dash, or a different ending, like "nike-outlet-sale.shop" instead of the real site. Also beware long hyphenated names with words like "outlet", "clearance" or "official" crammed together — established retailers rarely need them.
Check how old the domain is
You can look up any domain age free with a WHOIS or RDAP lookup. A store claiming years of happy customers on a domain registered five weeks ago is telling you two different stories, and the registration record is the one you can verify.
Find a real address and a real way to complain
Scroll to the footer and the contact page. A legitimate business shows a company name, a physical address or at least a registered business number, and an email that answers. Copy the address into a map. A warehouse that turns out to be an empty lot, or a contact form with nothing behind it, is a strong warning sign.
Do not trust the padlock by itself
The padlock in the browser bar only means the connection is encrypted, not that the shop is honest. Scam sites get SSL certificates for free in minutes. Treat encryption as the floor, not the ceiling: a shop without it is dangerous, a shop with it is still unproven.
Read reviews that are not on the store's own site
Search the store name plus words like "review", "scam" or "legit". Look at the dates: a wave of one-star posts in the last month matters more than a handful of old praise. Trustpilot, Reddit and Facebook scam-awareness groups are where the complaints land first — but check the dates there too, and be suspicious of a review profile that appeared overnight with hundreds of five-star posts.
Check the social accounts behind the ads
If you found the store through an ad, open the page that posted it. How old is the account? Does it talk to customers in the comments, or only publish discounts? A shop that has existed for years usually has years of posts; a page created last month with paid ads and no history has not earned your card details yet.
Pay in the way that can be undone
Use a credit card or a payment method with buyer protection, where a dispute is possible. Be firm with yourself about wire transfers, crypto, and gift cards: money sent those ways is usually gone for good, and honest stores do not ask for them. This one habit saves more people than any tool.
Listen to the group chat
If a parent or friend forwarded the link, the check is not only yours. The shareable kind of verification — one person checks, everyone sees the evidence — is how most families actually avoid the bad ones. Send the link with the reason you hesitated; a second pair of eyes catches what the excited first pair missed.
Keep the evidence, whatever you decide
Screenshot the product page, the price and the checkout before you pay. If the order goes wrong, those screenshots are what a card dispute asks for. And if the store turns out to be fake, reporting it — to the payment platform and to community watchlists — is what protects the next person.
What a trust report adds
These checks take minutes and judgment. VI CHECK's idea is to do the mechanical ones for you — domain age, registrar, blacklist feeds, hidden ownership — and show every signal with its source and date, so a verdict comes with evidence you can argue with. It is not finished yet; the sample report shows exactly what the finished report will look like.
VI CHECK is built and run end to end by AI agents on NanoCorp, and checking a store with it will always be free, with no account. Until the checker ships, this list is the version that fits in your head.