Recognising Fake Shops: A Practical Checklist

Fake shops rely on you skipping the checks

A convincing fake shop does not need to fool everyone, only the shoppers in a hurry, and a limited-time offer or a countdown timer is often designed to create exactly that hurry. None of the checks below take long, and none of them require special technical knowledge, which is also why skipping them is a choice rather than a necessity. Guidance from the US Federal Trade Commission and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre agrees on most of the same points, even though the two organisations serve different countries, which is a useful sign that this is genuinely practical advice rather than region-specific folklore.

Check the price against reality

The FTC's advice is direct on this point: if an expensive brand-name item is offered at a bargain price, it could be counterfeit or simply never arrive. A discount that looks unusually large compared with the same item elsewhere, especially combined with pressure to buy immediately, is one of the more reliable warning signs. This is different from a genuine voucher code or coupon code, which reduces a price that is otherwise consistent with the rest of the market; a fake shop's "discount" is usually the entire pricing strategy, not an addition to a normal price.

Search for the shop's name before you search on it

Both the FTC and the NCSC recommend researching an unfamiliar shop before buying from it, not just browsing its own pages. The FTC specifically suggests searching the company or product name together with words like "complaint" or "scam", and checking reviews across more than one source, since reviews on the seller's own site can be selective or fabricated. A shop with no findable history anywhere outside its own website is a reason for more caution, not less.

Look past the padlock icon

A website address starting with https, shown with a padlock icon in the browser, means the connection is encrypted, which matters for keeping data private in transit. It does not mean the shop itself is legitimate; the FTC notes plainly that scammers know how to set up encrypted sites too. The padlock is a minimum, not a guarantee, and should not be treated as proof that a shop is genuine.

Watch how a shop wants to be paid

This is one of the clearest signals available. The FTC advises never paying an unfamiliar online seller using gift cards, wire transfers through services like Western Union or MoneyGram, a payment app used person-to-person, or cryptocurrency, because these methods offer little to no way to get money back once sent. A card payment, by contrast, keeps dispute options open if something goes wrong. A shop that only accepts these harder-to-trace methods, or that pushes hard for one of them instead of a normal card checkout, is behaving like a fake shop even if everything else about the site looks fine.

Read for the small details scammers rush

The NCSC points out that scam sites often contain bad spelling or grammar, come from an unusual-looking email address, or have design elements that feel slightly off, though it also warns that scams are getting more convincing and can fool experienced users too. Checking for a genuine physical address, a working contact page, and terms and conditions that actually make sense for the country the shop claims to operate in is a reasonable extra step, since fake shops often either omit this information or copy it inconsistently from a real retailer.

A short checklist before you buy from an unfamiliar shop

• Search the shop's name plus "review", "complaint" or "scam" and read results from outside the shop's own site.
• Compare the price with at least one other retailer selling the same item; an unusually large gap is a warning sign, not a lucky find.
• Pay by card rather than gift card, wire transfer, payment app or cryptocurrency, so a dispute route stays open.
• Check for a real contact address, working customer service, and terms that match the country the shop claims to be based in.
• If in doubt, type the shop's address directly into the browser rather than clicking a link from an email, text or social media ad, as advised by the NCSC.

We only list codes for shops already in our directory of 527 shops across 22 countries on daily-coupons.info, and being listed there is not itself a guarantee against a shop's own business practices changing, so the checks above remain worth doing regardless of where you found a voucher code or coupon code. Our about us page explains how we approach shop listings.

This article is general safety information, not legal advice, and cannot guarantee that any specific shop is genuine. If you believe you have found a scam, report it to the relevant national authority, such as the FTC in the US or Action Fraud in the UK.