New Tool To Beat Internet Fraud (NAPSA)Thekeyto protecting yourself while shopping or making donations over the Web is to know WebBuyer Beware bank on the fact that consumers 1999 La $310 who you're dealing with—before you send money. But scam artists A look at the average amountvictims lost per Web-based fraud cases: wrongfully think they can’t verify who’s on the other end of their computers. As a result, criminals run 2000L__ $427 each year. For instance, Internet criminals sometimes set up fake merchant 2002L__ i sae8 thousands of successful Web scams sites that look similar to and have Web addresses close to the addresses of established shopping sites. They'll then send e-mails directing people to those sites in an effort to “sell” merchandise that doesn’t really exist. In 2004 alone, consumers whofell victims to such scamslost an average of $895 each. People can protect themselves by using services such as GeoTrust’s TrustWatch service to verify the legitimacy of Web sites and blogs— and to find out whether online merchants, companies and charities are (or aren't) trustworthy. The service’s free search engine lets users run queries on sites or groups they’re thinking of doing business with. They can then view easily under- 2001L___ $518 2003 = $527 oo4|___ $895 Source: National Fraud Information Center @ that don’t have enough data to be verified but aren’t known to be fraudulent receive a yellow rating. Knownfraudulent sites display a red warningsign. If a site is deemed to be both verified and secure for the exchange of private data, it receives a lock icon next to the green verification rating. In addition, the service also offers a Site Report link that users can access to get more information from additional sources, including nology, we can obtain a trust rating TRUSTe, BizRate and CNET. Consumers can use this data as an additional way to choose whatsites to do business with. In the case of fake merchant Websites, the service would show a yellow or red icon and havelittle additional verification information. Consumers who ran security safe receive a green rating. Sites distance. To access the free service, visit www.trustwatch.com. stood green, yellow and red verifica- tion symbols beside each search result. “By using a very sophisticated identity verification scoring techfor any site on the Web,” explains GeoTrust CEO Neal Creighton. Sites that can be verified as searches would know to keep their
