If you find yourself on a site and want to know if it's dangerous then the advice given below should be very useful. This is most important to consider before providing a site with sensitive information such as credit card numbers, banking information, signing up for an offer, etc...
In general you may want to be wary of a site if it asks you for unnecessary personal information, a credit card number, or a bank number when it's not necessary. This could be evidence of them phishing for your sensitive information. You should also be wary of sites with offers that seem too good to be true. For sites such as these you should definitely consider using methods such as those described below to make sure that the site is actually safe before proceeding further.
Index
1. How To Investigate A Site Before Visiting It
I would recommend that you don't click on any link until you've made sure the site is not dangerous. If this link appears to be a shortened URL, then you must first unshorten the URL before testing it. If you don't do this then your analysis will actually just test the site that shortened it. To do this you can go to this site and paste the shortened URL into the box. It will then provide you with the actual URL, which will lead to the site you are actually interested in. Only when you know the site is probably safe would I recommend actually visiting it.
2. Check Site Through URLVoid
One of the first things you can do is to copy the website's URL and paste it intoURLVoid. This will check the site against the databases of many reputation engines and domain blacklists. This means that if the site is already known to be dangerous it will likely be flagged by at least a few services. However, even if they all come up clean it doesn't necessarily mean that the site is trustworthy. It should be noted that URLVoid will report a verdict of "Clean" for a site even if the site is not yet in a particular services database.
If the site is new enough, or at least newly dangerous, then it's definitely possible that it will not yet be caught by any of these services. URLVoid is only useful in that it can tell you if any of the services find the site to be dangerous. Once it's done scanning you can click on the option to "Scan with NoVirusThanks". This will also scan the page with multiple antivirus applications. Remember that a clean verdict from all services and products does not guarantee that the site is safe.
You may also want to use VirusTotal for this same purpose, although many of the services it checks are identical to URLVoid. To use this just select the option to "scan a URL", which is below the button labeled "Scan it!". In general I prefer to use URLVoid, but if you like you can also check the site using VirusTotal.
3. Check Site Using Comodo SiteInspector
Another good service to use to check whether a site is safe isComodo SiteInspector. This service is very effective at identifying exploits and also queries a massive list of sites already known to be dangerous. Do be aware that sometmes it may take a few minutes for it to finish checking the domain, but the information it provides is very useful.
4. Check Age Of Site
It may also be useful to ascertain the age of the site. One of the simplest ways to do this is to copy the URL of the site and go to this Domain Age Tool. You can then paste the site URL in the box. After clicking submit it will begin analyzing the site and will provide you with its age. Thus, if it is an old site, and is not found dangerous by any of the services checked by URLVoid, then it is likely not dangerous. However, this does not mean that it is necessarily safe, it just makes it more likely that it is. Another advantage to checking the age of a site is that most scam sites tend to not last too long before they are taken down. Therefore, the older a site is the less likely it is that it's a scam site. That said, of course legitimate sites can be new as well, but this is yet another piece of evidence you can use when evaluating the trustworthiness of a site.
5. Check Reputation of Site Using Web Of Trust (WOT)
(Note that sometimes sites may have bad ratings that are not entirely deserved. If you are not willing to read through the comments of other users then I recommend you only depend on my other advice and skip this section. Correctly interpreting WOT ratings can be tricky.)
Yet another check you can perform is to copy the URL of the site into the box in the upper right hand corner of the main site for Web of Trust (WOT). After pasting the URL click go. This will bring up the scorecard for the site, which has additional information about the site and people's comments about the site. Note that if you already have the WOT addon installed, and you are currently on the website in question, you can just go to the WOT icon and select the option to "View scorecard for rating details". In my opinion the most useful information contained in this scorecard are the comments.
It should be noted that the comments of individuals can be biased for many reasons, but by reading through many comments you should be able to get an idea of whether the site is dangerous and the main problems people have with the site, assuming there are a lot of negative comments. This information can be used to decide whether the site is actually trustworthy or not. However take these comments with a grain of salt and always use multiple methods when deciding as to whether a site is safe or not.
6. How to Make Sure A Site Is Safe Before Making Purchases
Before you provide any sensitive information to a site you should definitely follow the above steps to make sure the site is trustworthy. However, before transmitting your sensitive information to the site there are also additional things to be aware of, even after ensuring that the site is trustworthy. Make sure that the page where you fill in your sensitive information, which may include credit card numbers or banking information, is secured with a SSL certificate. In general, if the URL of the page you're on begins with https then an encrypted connection is being used and your information is probably safe, at least assuming that the site is trustworthy. As long as the site is secured then nobody other than you and the people operating the site can view the information you are submitting. I would strongly recommend that you do not transmit sensitive information through any site that is not secured.
However, there are actually many different types of SSL certificates. These provide varying levels of trust. An extended validation certificate will guarantee that the business is legitimate while many other types are only validated with respect to the domain, but not necessarily about the owners and operators of the domain. For more information about the differences between these certificates please see this page. If the certificate itself guarantees that the site is safe, and belongs to a valid business, then you can actually shop without worry. The site is safe.
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