Always Check Your URLs
Recently, I was doom-scrolling through Facebook and came across an ad for Pearl Izumi. It hawked a clearance sale, so I thought I’d check it out. Well, I know better than to click on ads, so I opened a new tab in my browser and googled Pearl Izumi. I clicked on the result that I thought was their home page, and wow, did I get a surprise! Great discounts on a wide variety of gear. I browsed for a while and started adding items to the cart.
I told Kim about it, and he wanted to look for some new gear, as well. I should have immediately gotten a red flag when the sale he found didn’t match the one I was looking at, but fortunately, it at least made it into my subconscious brain. At this point, I hadn’t really looked at the URL, believing that I had a valid link from my Google search. ✎
Looking at the URL, I found that it started with PearlIzumiUS rather than just PearlIzumi. We got Kim to the same site I was on, and he was giving me the names of things to add to the cart I had started. As we continued to browse, I started feeling rather uncertain. It really seemed too good to be true, and I told Kim what I felt. I think we both Googled the URL then. I had not looked at the complete URL yet but went back to it and found that it was PearlIzumiUS.Store, rather than “.com.” The search for this URL returned scam alerts.
I decided to google Pearl Izumi again and got different results the second time. A panel on the right side of the screen now showed the company information, something that didn’t appear in my original search. I noted the URL was pearlizumi*dot*com (without the “US” in it.) I did click on the “website” URL in the dialog box, and when I checked to see where it took me, it said pearlizumi*dot*com. Pearl Izumi was indeed having a good clearance sale but at more believable price points.
The moral of the story is: Always check your URLs, even when you type them in directly. Most of us have probably experienced the odd occurrence where you think of something that you need to buy, want to buy, or need to research, then you suddenly start seeing ads for that very thing all over the place. It’s as if Big Brother Is Watching You. I had the same sort of feeling when getting the false search results. Maybe I had a typo in my search. I remember years ago, (many years ago) having a typo when trying to go to the Google search engine before it became so omnipresent. I had typed “goggle*dot*com” instead of “google”. It was an adult content site. I was at work. Fortunately, I was self-employed.
René Sanders, Club Member