Phishing links and fake lookalike sites are common enough that it's worth having a quick mental checklist before clicking something unfamiliar, especially one that arrived in an email, text, or DM out of nowhere.

Before you click

Hover over the link (on desktop) to see the actual destination URL in your browser's status bar before clicking - a link that displays as "yourbank.com" can secretly point somewhere completely different, and hovering reveals the real destination without you having to actually visit it.

Checking a domain before trusting it

A domain that was registered very recently is a mild red flag, especially if it's impersonating an established brand - our Domain Age Checker shows you exactly when a domain was first registered. For a deeper check, the Whois Checker shows the registration details, and Google Malware Checker and Suspicious Domain Checker check a URL against known threat and blacklist databases.

Password habits that actually matter

Length matters more than complexity for resisting brute-force attempts - a longer passphrase is generally stronger than a short password stuffed with symbols. The single most important habit, though, is not reusing the same password across multiple sites, since one breached site then exposes your account everywhere else you used that same password too.

Two-factor authentication, briefly

2FA adds a second check beyond just your password - usually a code from an app or a text message - so that a stolen password alone isn't enough to get into your account. It's one of the highest-value security steps for the small amount of extra friction it adds, worth turning on for email and banking accounts at minimum.

If you run a website yourself

Our Blacklist Lookup and Domain Hosting Checker are useful for checking your own domain's reputation and hosting details periodically, since a hacked site can end up blacklisted without the owner noticing right away.