I wish that I could find the article in The Toronto Star today, but apparently, there's a website offering insurance who are allegedly scamming potential customers by getting them to send them the application fee by Western Union, when there is fact no policy for said customer.
The article went on to say that the website was still up, so out of curiousity, I checked and sure enough it was.
However, the FIRST thing I noticed which would have clued me in right away that this at least warranted further investigation was that there was a banner on the bottom of the website saying that the website was being hosted by a printing company. Now - don't get me wrong, this printing company is very reputable as far as I know but when I clicked on the site, it showed me that they offered free web hosting. "Great Caeser's Ghost!", I said to me, "How reputable can an insurance company be who has to depend on free web hosting?".
My advice is this...never fork out any money to any site online without doing your own due dilegence, it's FAR too easy to put up a website. Look beyond the glitz and the flash. Looks to see if the have their own https: site for secure transactions...check for brick and mortar addresses, not just some random phone number.
Bottom line - be careful out there - don't assume that any company is legitimate without looking at the signs.
I would like to appreciate you for sharing such an impressive article with us.
ReplyDeleteThank you - I appreciate the comment. Too often, we fall into this trap of assuming that a nice, slick, online presense is legitimate. There's usually telling signs if one looks deep enough;
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