Am I on the right site?

Skibunny40

I want to open a S&S ISA with AJ Bell, but how do I know for sure I'm on the genuine site? I've listened to too many scare stories about cloned websites!
It's youinvest.co.uk, secure padlock at the start, company number shows it's been registered for 20 years. Is that enough "proof" or should I be checking other things?

lozzy1965

https://www.money.co.uk/guides/5-ways-to-check-a-website-is-legit.htm
If you search for the website as opposed to following a link emailed to you, that should be pretty secure too, along with other checks.

Eyeful

Nice to see someone wants to check out a company before giving their money to them.
You can check out AJ BELL on the Financial Service register here
https://register.fca.org.uk/s/firm?id=001b000000MfHEjAAN

Also contact them via the London Stock Exchange here
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/personal-investing/member-firm-broker-directory
Once you have found them. Click on their name & you will get through to the correct site and not a clone.

I find it useful to run website addresses through the following checker just to be doubly sure. Just copy and paste the address into     https://www.scamdoc.com/

PS. The secure pad lock just means that any data transferred between your computer and the website is encrypted. It does not tell you if the people at the other end are honest or crooks. That's why you need to do extra checks.

Mr.Saver

It's very tricky. The cloned websites can have very similar domain names, such as revolut.com (with a lower case 'L') vs revoIut.com (that's a capital 'i'). The padlock symbol is also not very useful, because nowadays most websites have it, even the clones.

If you have been to their website before, the best way to go back is to use the browser history, and bookmark it for future use. However, if you haven't visited their website before and are looking to open a new account, navigate to them from a trusted third party well known website, such as MSE, can help you avoid landing on a cloned website.

Big name search engines, such as Google, can also help, as long as you directly search the company name in the most commonly used formats, such as "AJ Bell", and don't add anything else to it. Never search for generic keywords or add other words to the company name. For example, searching for "AJ Bell investment platform" may lead you to a cloned website because the cloned site may have bought the keyword "investment platform" from the search engine and has "AJ Bell" on their website.

Skibunny40

Thanks for all the info, much appreciated