15 Unofficial Websites

A growing problem is the grey area of unofficial websites which look similar to official websites, often to take online payments for various services or a toll. Some are outright scams, while many add a small administration fee that you would not get on the official website or direct you to expensive premium rate telephone numbers. These websites tend have a section of small print explaining that they are not linked to the service you are paying for and may even justify their fee through additional features like status reports. That said, the UK tax office HMRC has taken action against over 75 fraudulent websites, redirecting over one million users to its legitimate website in the past 9 months.

Many people are tricked into visiting these websites through web searches for the service they need to pay for, or checking the telephone number they need to call. Most people that are duped are totally unaware that they paid slightly more than the official price or used a premium number instead of the genuine free or national landline rate number, until the bill arrives. In the case of the scam sites though, not only would they think they have paid, but afterwards would probably have to pay a much larger fine for non-payment. Another issue of the scam sites is that a user's credit card details would have been compromised and would need to be cancelled. This is on top of the possibility that the email with the receipt of your payment may also contain a virus or trojan. 

Even with the grey' websites that only add their fee, there can be issues where the payment does not make it to the correct organization and a fine is also generated. Typically, if there is a payment deadline, last minute payments may not make it to the genuine payment site. Recently London radio stations were playing a government campaign highlighting the issue with unofficial websites claiming to accept payments for the London Congestion Charge (the daily toll for driving in London in the week).

So how do you avoid these unofficial websites?  The first step is to adopt the view that the top or high website search engine results are not always the official sites and that a little bit of research will need to be done before you part with your money or pick up the phone. Once you are confident that you have the correct website, bookmark it, so you don’t have to search for it again.

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