{"id":40768,"date":"2021-08-04T15:20:37","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T15:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=40768"},"modified":"2021-08-04T15:20:37","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T15:20:37","slug":"determining-the-legitimacy-reliability-of-a-domain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=40768","title":{"rendered":"determining the \u2018legitimacy\u2019\/\u2019reliability\u2019 of a domain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve recently been asked by several people to investigate websites (especially e-commerce ones) for reliability\/legitimateness.<\/p>\n<p>Thought someone else may find my process useful, and\/or have some ideas on how to improve it ?<\/p>\n<p>So here goes:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pop a terminal window (I&#8217;m on a Mac, so I open Terminal &#8211; feel free to use your terminal emulator of choice (on Windows, you&#8217;ll need to have the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/wsl\/about\">Subsystem for Linux<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/s\/?tag=antipaucity-20&#038;creative=392009&#038;campaign=212361&#038;field-keywords=Cygwin\">Cygwin<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/cygwin.com\">installed<\/a>))\n<ol>\n<li>Type <code>whois &lt;domain.tld> | less<\/code>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ll use this domain (<a href=\"\/\/antipaucity.com\">antipaucity.com<\/a>) for an example<\/li>\n<li>you <em>may<\/em> be able to use whois.com (eg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whois.com\/whois\/antipaucity.com\">whois.com\/whois\/antipaucity.com<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Look at all of the following:\n<ul>\n<li>Creation (<code>Creation Date: 2006-02-22T01:12:10Z<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>Expiration (<code>Registry Expiry Date: 2023-02-22T01:12:10Z<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>Name server(s) (<code>NS3.PAIRNIC.COM<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>Registral URL (<code>http:\/\/www.pairdomains.com<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>Registrar (<code>Pair Domains<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>Contact info (should [generally] be anonymized in some manner)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Possible flags:\n<ul>\n<li>If the domain&#8217;s under 2 years old, and\/or the registration period is less than a year (we can talk about when short registrations <em>may<\/em> make sense in the comments)<\/li>\n<li>If the name servers are &#8220;out of the country&#8221; (which, of course, will vary based on where you are)<\/li>\n<li>If the contact info <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> anonymized<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Load the website in question in a browser (use an ingonito and\/or proxied tab, if you like) and review the following types of pages:\n<ul>\n<li>Contact Us\n<ul>\n<li>Where are they located?<\/li>\n<li>Does the location stated match what you <em>expect<\/em> based on the whois response?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>About Us\n<ul>\n<li>Does it read &#8220;naturally&#8221; in the language it purports to be written in?\n<ul>\n<li>Ie, does it sound like a native speaker wrote it, or does it sound stiltedly\/mechanically translated?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Does it match what is in the whois record and the Contact Us page?<\/li>\n<li>Do they provide social media links (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc)?\n<ul>\n<li>What do their social media presence(s) say about them?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Return\/Refund Policy (for ecommerce sites only)\n<ul>\n<li>What is the return window?<\/li>\n<li>How much will be charged to send it back and\/or restorck it?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Shipping Policy (for ecommerce sites only)\n<ul>\n<li>How long from submitting an order to when it ships to when it arrives?<\/li>\n<li>Where is it shipping from?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Privacy Policy (only applies if you may be sharing data with them (ecommerce, creating accounts, etc)\n<ul>\n<li>What do they <em>claim<\/em> they will (and will <em>not<\/em>) do with your private information?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Is the site running over TLS\/SSL?\n<ul>\n<li>You should see a little padlock icon in your browser&#8217;s address bar<\/li>\n<li>Click that icon, and read what the browser reports about the SSL certificate used<\/li>\n<li>Given that running over TLS is <em><a href=\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?s=let%27s+encrypt&amp;submit.x=0&amp;submit.y=0#.YQqtwO0pBAc\">100% <strong>free<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, there is absolutely <em><strong>NO<\/strong><\/em> reason for a site to <em><strong>NOT<\/strong><\/em> use SSL (double especially if they&#8217;re purporting to be an ecommerce site)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Reviewing these items <em>usually<\/em> takes me about 2-3 minutes. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not foolproof (after all, better fools are invented every day), but it can give you a good overview and relative confidence level in the site in question.<\/p>\n<p>from antipaucity https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/2021\/08\/04\/determining-the-legitimacy-reliability-of-a-domain\/<br \/>\nvia <a href=\"https:\/\/ifttt.com\/?ref=da&#038;site=wordpress\">IFTTT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve recently been asked by several people to investigate websites (especially e-commerce ones) for reliability\/legitimateness. Thought someone else may find my process useful, and\/or have some ideas on how to improve it ? So here goes: Pop a terminal window (I&#8217;m on a Mac, so I open Terminal &#8211; feel free to use your terminal &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=40768\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">determining the \u2018legitimacy\u2019\/\u2019reliability\u2019 of a domain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[95],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-40768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blih","tag-antipaucity"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40769,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40768\/revisions\/40769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40768"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=40768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}