How to understand if a site is safe

How to understand if a site is safe

Other ways

Check if the connection is secure

To check the security of a site, check the security status symbol on the left of the web address

If you want to know more details about the privacy and the permissions, click on the icon.

Verify that the site uses the HTTPS protocol

The first thing you need to check to verify the safety of a website is if the site uses the protocol HTTPS. You can do that by looking at the URL:

• Sites that start with "http://" are not safe: they don't guarantee a safe connection to the users
• Sites that start with "https://" are safe (the "S" stands for "secure"). They share datas in an encrypted form.

Read carefully the URL

Many people just take a quick look at the web URL so it is not that difficult for hackers to creat scam sites: hackers replace and use domains with characters similar to official websites. It's not to check if a website is original or is a clone: you need to read carefully the web address and look for misspells. If it looks cloned to you, don't go into the website because it could steal information from users.

Check the SSL certificate

The presence of a SSL certificate within a website ensures that the exchange of data between the browser and the server of the site takes place safely, without any theft of information.

You can easily check the details of the certificate by clicking on the lock icon.

Don't share personal information if you don't see a lock icon.

Check if the website has a "contact us" option.

If you aren't completely sure that the site is safe, look for a "contact us" page. Most websites provide a section where users can find the phone number and the e-mail address to ask question about the site. If the website doesn't have this contact info, do not trust the website.

Check the site's safety with online tools

Online there are many simple tools that can verify the safety of a website and the reliability of the url. The most known one is .

Google Safe Browsing

It's a tool provided by Google that checks billions of URL every day. To verify the site's safety, just copy and paste the site's URL in the search box. Google Safe Browsing will show a report of the URL. In the case of potentially dangerous sites it also provides reasons why they have negative ratings (too many advertisements, unstable connection, etc.)