How to spot and avoid fake or scammy e-commerce stores and sellers online

Follow these guidelines to help make a judgment call on whether a website, online shopping deal, or marketplace seller is legit

On my journey to shop for others, I’ve encountered (but never bought from) a lot of sketchy websites that I don’t trust. Months later, those websites shut down, proving my intuition right that they were fake or scams.

There is a list of things I do to confirm the legitimacy of an online store or seller. You can apply a few of them or all of them to help make your own judgment call on whether you want to purchase from a website that you’ve never heard of before.

Remember:

• Anyone can make a website, e-commerce store, and marketplace account.

• Anyone can make a Google or social media ad.

• “Too good to be true” is a real thing.

With that being said, there should be an inverse relationship between the risk you’re willing to take and the price you’re willing to pay. Try to calculate your willingness to take a gamble. For instance, evaluate whether saving $100 on a used iPad from a random eBay account (compared to the price of buying a new one from the Apple store) is worth the potential loss or ha…