a website business has the contact address as my home address

companieshell

Hello
An online business has used my home address as their main contact address. They have registered the address also on companies house where I managed to get that removed, that was a month ago and now a website has appeared. The whole website looks as if it was ai created with lots of false information like a  high score rating from Trustpilot stating it s has lots of reviews, but in fact their company is not on this site. It states other review sites too. If you do the google search the only thing that comes up is their website and no other information. But this is early days. Firstly I want to know what problems can arise if my address is used like this, it obviously makes them look legit. How can I get them to take my address down? I don't want to be in correspondence personally with them.  Thank you  

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

OP is the site run by a larger company (e.g Shopify)? If so contacting them, or even reporting the website as a scam, might see it taken down.  

Other than that hopefully someone more knowledgeable has some better ideas   

user1977

I doubt there are any real problems beyond getting mail for them (either junk or people pursuing claims). What have Companies House done with it? If they’ve marked as not having a real registered office address then hopefully it will be obvious to others that it’s fake.

companieshell

Thank you the_lunatic_is_in_my_head for your reply. Unfortunately the site is not run by a larger company. When you go on the site it is like it belongs to a large corporation, with lots of photos of office workers in a high tech in environment. The company says it has offices in Dubai and the US, but when you look up those addresses it looks dubious. 

RAS

Does it actually have responses on Trustpilot?

flaneurs_lobster

Be interested in how you were made aware of this site having used your home address.

Did the Companies House listing have the names/addresses of the company's officials? Is it still listed albeit without your address?

OutdoorQueen

You can use this page to report fake websites:

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams/report-scam-website

There is info on this page about reporting fake trustpilot reviews:
https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/features/flag-report-reviews

companieshell

Hi user1977  thanks for your reply, Companies house were pretty amazing after I filled out a form they removed my address in less than a week and gave the company their default address in Cardiff. I understand they give the company a month to change the address to one they can prove some form of relationship too. I doubt they will change it and hope companies house will then strike them off. But of course this won't solve them using my address as the main address for their company on their website. When you open the page of the site the first thing you see at the top of the page is my address. It is like the head office.  I can only hope anyone going on the site uses due diligence and does a search of the company before employing them.

companieshell

Hi RAS
The company is not registered on Trustpilot they have mocked up a logo on their site saying it has over 1000 reviews, same with google and two other companies that review.

companieshell

flaneurs_lobster said:

Be interested in how you were made aware of this site having used your home address.

Did the Companies House listing have the names/addresses of the company's officials? Is it still listed albeit without your address?

  I initially go a letter from companies house with a code to register on their site under the companies name.

It has a director with a separate address, when I looked up the address the building consisted of a couple of flats. But the address on companies house just give the number of the house and not the apartment number.

booneruk

You could try looking up the abuse email contact in the website domain information and contacting them to say its a fake/scam site. This might get the website taken down.

Visit https://www.whois.com/whois/ and enter the website domain name and click search (I'm not sure if it's mandatory for an abuse email to be listed but it's pretty standard)

I entered moneysavingexpert.com and see this: