Farewell from The UnSponsored Link
Dear Readers,
Due to economic considerations, Consumers Union has decided to shut down Consumer Reports WebWatch as of July 31, 2009.
Along with our parent site, Consumer Reports WebWatch, the UnSponsored Link will remain online as a consumer resource, but we'll no longer be able to follow-up on your comments or investigation requests. As such, for our last post, we’d like to highlight some of the techniques we’ve used to uncover the dozens of online scams we’ve exposed in this blog. We hope you’ll be able to use these methods to spot an online scam before you find yourself scammed.

1. Does the site provide full contact information?
Credible Web sites should clearly disclose the physical location where they are produced, including an address, a telephone number or e-mail address. Although this information is typically found on a “contact us” or “about us” page, some sites stick it in the privacy policy (usually at the very bottom) or terms of use, so you may have to do some clicking and scrolling. If all else fails, check the return policy for an address. If you’ve exhausted all these options and still can’t find an address, find another site.


