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I will make reservations for a hotel, but I heard people create fake websites to scam people. The name of the hotel is called La Quinta Inn, this is the site I found, La Quinta Inns & Suites Official Site - Hotels, Reservations, Hotel Deals How do I know this is the real site? Is there a way to check it? Please tell me if it is and what information I'm suppose to look for in order to know if it is?
I will make reservations for a hotel, but I heard people create fake websites to scam people. The name of the hotel is called La Quinta Inn, this is the site I found, La Quinta Inns & Suites Official Site - Hotels, Reservations, Hotel Deals How do I know this is the real site? Is there a way to check it?
That's a legit website of the La Quinta chain.
Typically if the site has the McAfee Secure icon on it and when you click on it, McAfee reports it as a safe site, it's safe.
Typically if the site has the McAfee Secure icon on it and when you click on it, McAfee reports it as a safe site, it's safe.
The ;landing page on Mcafree's site can easily be faked unless you check the domain in the address bar, the link itself can be posted here or used on any site:
That's actually pretty poor service because they aren't checking the referrer and the domain in question is not prominent enough.
If you want to check the origin of a domain you can try a whois lookup, note that this isn't 100% either but you could eliminate sites listing questionable information. In this case:
Registrant Contact:
LaQuintaWorldwide,L.L.C.
DNS Admin ()
Fax:
101ConventionCenterDr.
LasVegas, NV 89109
US
If it were registered to someone in say India then you can pretty much come to the conclusion its fake site. Whois information for most sites is going to be accurate because you can lose the domain if it isn't but again it can be faked so don't rely on it soley.
In this case since it's such a short domain chances of it being illegitimate is very unlikely because the domain name itself is very valuable.
thecoalman gave you some good info... if you want to spend a little time investigating sites before you drop your personal details into them (which I recommend), you can learn a little from this site:
I tried the Internic link, it said the domain registrar was owned by enom.com, which doesn't mean much to me.
As an assist OP, you can try a WhoIs lookup at domains.whois.com and enter the domain name you're questioning... from the URL line. IN this case it's lq.com.
WhoIs shows the name of the names of the responsible parties...
Domain name: lq.com
Registrant Contact:
LaQuintaWorldwide,L.L.C.
Administrative Contact:
LaQuintaWorldwide,L.L.C.
Technical Contact:
LaQuintaWorldwide,L.L.C.
A fake website, using the website address, would not produce this kind of information.
The ;landing page on Mcafree's site can easily be faked unless you check the domain in the address bar, the link itself can be posted here or used on any site:
A fake website, using the website address, would not produce this kind of information.
It can because you can provide false whois info, the registrant controls what is displayed and it can be changed at any time. The inducement to keep it truthful is you can lose the domain if you have false information. Again I wouldn't make any judgments based soley on the whois information but instead use it as one test, as I mentioned it's very useful if the information is questionable such as if the registrant lives in India and it's a US company.
Last edited by thecoalman; 11-01-2010 at 07:51 PM..
The landing page has the domain on it. The only way you can get faked is if you can't read.
Who says it has to be served from Mcafee's site, I could copy the HTML and have a page up in seconds with my domain on it being served from a subdomain using the Mcafee name with a somewhat relevant domain. Most people don't take the time to check the URL in the address bar and don't understand about subdomains and what they are looking at. My point is you can easily fool many people. Even a link from bad site to that page will fool some people because most aren't even going to know what domain they came from is and will focus on the "CERTIFIED MCAFEE SECURE SITE 01-NOV-2010" in big red letters.
Who says it has to be served from Mcafee's site, I could copy the HTML and have a page up in seconds with my domain on it being served from a subdomain using the Mcafee name with a somewhat relevant domain. Most people don't take the time to check the URL in the address bar and don't understand about subdomains and what they are looking at. My point is you can easily fool many people. Even a link from bad site to that page will fool some people because most aren't even going to know what domain they came from is and will focus on the "CERTIFIED MCAFEE SECURE SITE 01-NOV-2010" in big red letters.
I suppose I expect a little more from internet users....
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