See if the company is registered with any relevant trade organizations, the BBB, or local, state, or federal authorities. Look for customer reviews of the company to determine if it's legitimate, and ask friends and family if they have any experience with the company.

Checking Website Legitimacy Look for a padlock icon to the left of the URL, which indicates the site's security. You can also look at the URL itself—more credible and legitimate sites may start with "http" and end with ". gov" or ". org."

You can identify a scammer by spotting red flags such as sudden requests for your personal information, grammatical and spelling errors in emails, offers that seem too good to be true, along with other signs.