NordVPN, one of the best VPNs on the market, has today announced that its Threat Protection Pro tool has come in third place amongst a field of 35 competitors when it comes to identifying fake online stores.
Threat Protection Pro's anti-phishing credentials were certified in independent testing earlier this year, and has now taken part in AV-Comparatives' Fake-Shops Detection Test 2024.
Catching out the fakes
With 35 different solutions for spotting fake stores put to the test, NordVPN managed to rank third overall. The rigorous testing from AV-Comparatives saw each contender given 500 fake stores and 100 genuine sites to choose from. NordVPN Threat Protection Pro proved to be correct in 70% of cases.
That might not sound incredible, but that was third in the overall stakes and well above established antivirus names like Avast, AVG and McAfee who all scored between 41% and 50%. Of course, for your subscription, you also get access to a host of other privacy tools and our #1 choice of VPN. The only providers that outdid NordVPN were dedicated shopping extensions.
Speaking about the scams, Domininkas Virbickas, head of development at Threat Protection Development said: "Fake shopping sites take payments from unsuspecting customers and disappear without delivering the purchased goods. We put our greatest effort into protecting our customers from the severe consequences caused by these sites.”
The useful thing about Threat Protection Pro is that you don't even need to be connected to NordVPN to use it, you can enable or disable it in just one click.
How to spot fake stores
- Watch out for too-good-to-be-true discounts. You aren't going to find the latest iPhone for half price a day after launch.
- Keep an eye on the domain – is it a slight misspelling of a more well-known site?
- Secure domains should have a valid SSL certificate, this is indicated by the "https://" in the web address and the padlock symbol in the search bar.
- Does the retailer have proven customer support and a valid way to contact them?
- They take some more obscure or less secure methods of payment. If a site only takes payment by wire transfer or gift cards then that's a massive red flag.
