The CanITrustBiz Trust Standard
How we decide whether a website or business is legit.
Every verdict rests on the same full lookup and the same plain rules, backed by first-hand accounts from real people and moderated by a human before anything is published.
What the trust lookup covers
Domain age & WHOIS
We confirm how long the domain has existed and that its ownership records are consistent. Sites spun up days before taking money are a classic scam signal.
SSL & connection safety
The site must serve over HTTPS with a valid, current certificate issued to the real operator — not a self-signed or mismatched one.
Business registration
We match the trading name to a real registered company and check the registration number against public records.
Address & contact
A verifiable physical address and working contact details. A business that hides who and where it is cannot be trusted with your money.
Fraud & scam reports
We search fraud databases, chargeback registers and public complaint boards for unresolved scam reports before we ever say "legit".
Payment & reviews
We review how payments are taken and cross-check first-hand accounts from real customers against everything else we found.
From lookup to verdict
01
Lookup
We run the full trust checklist on the website or business.
02
Gather
Registered members file first-hand accounts of dealing with it.
03
Review
A CanITrustBiz reviewer weighs the lookup and the accounts.
04
Verdict
We publish a plain verdict — legit or not — with the checks behind it.
05
Stand
Verdicts and accounts remain on the record; nothing is quietly rewritten.
What we stand for
Every verdict is earned, not bought
CanITrustBiz takes no commission, sells no leads, and runs no marketplace. No business can pay to be marked legitimate, to rank higher, or to have a member’s account removed.
Accounts come from real people
Every post on a record is filed by a registered member and attributed to their name. Anonymous posting is not possible. Members register once and can then post about any entity on the register.
A reviewer reads everything first
A new account lands as pending and is reviewed by a CanITrustBiz reviewer before it is published. Nothing appears on a public record automatically.
Records are not quietly edited
Approved accounts join the thread in the order they were posted, with replies and quotes kept intact. We publish the conversation as it happened.
"Not yet verified" is an honest answer
A brand-new record starts without a verdict and is shown that way. We would rather say "we haven’t checked this yet" than invent a verdict nobody earned.
We say when something looks wrong
If the lookup or the accounts turn up red flags, the record says so plainly. Protecting the next person matters more than being polite to a business.
For everyone
Report a website or business.
If you have bought from or dealt with a website or business, your account helps the next person avoid a scam — or trust a good one. Register once, find it on the register, and post. A reviewer will check your account before it appears.
What makes an account useful
- Describe what actually happened — the order, the payment, the response.
- Be specific and factual. Dates, amounts and order numbers carry weight.
- Reply to earlier posts to add context rather than repeating them.
- Accounts are attributed to your name, so write what you would say in person.