This is a guest blog post from VeriSign UK, a Get Safe Online sponsor.
One of the biggest problems people have is spotting the difference between legitimate websites and fake sites that look real but which are fronts for online criminals.
SSL Certificates – the technology that protects your private data when you buy online – are helpful and the latest Extended Validation SSL Certificates also provide reassurance about the owners of the site as well as the strength of their encryption.
However, most web pages are not protected by SSL; only the checkout or registration pages where you enter personal information. So we have developed the VeriSign Trust™ Seal, which website owners can display on any web page to prove that their site is legitimate.
When you see this sign, you know that VeriSign has verified the ownership of the site and checked that the site is free of malware.
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The important qualifier is not just that you SEE the sign, but that you can also click on it & it links back to a page on the verisign site displaying informion about the company owning the website you just came from.
I have seen fake websites using just an image of the seal with no link behind it. However, when I filled out the form on the verisign site to report misuse of the seal, I got no response from verisign.