Prolific.co moving to Prolific.com & Some tips on spotting scams

The email:

Hi,

We're making a minor tweak to our domain name. Prolific.co will soon change to Prolific.com.

Don't worry - you won't have to do anything other than log back in again and update the site details in your password managers. Disruption will be minimal and this won't affect your usual experience with Prolific. Our FAQ is here if you have questions.

Thank you for helping us revolutionise how the world learns about people, so people can revolutionise the world.

The Prolific Team

 

I did email them to ensure that it was legit since I saw a few potential red flags.

 

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Since this can be a good learning experience on what to look out for, I'll write down what caught my attention about this email:

1. The email came from prolific.com not prolific.co - You can't trust a website when it says it's associated with another site. Anyone can write anything. It's also good to be wary of the email address being spoofed. Also, the email came from "Prolific Team", which is different than the usual "Prolific" or "Jim from Prolific" that I usually get.

2. All of the links in the email go to prolific.com and not prolific.co - even their FAQ. This is even more concerning when it redirects to the prolific.co website. This is a common tactic used by websites pretending to be affiliated with a different site.

3. Misspelling the word "revolutionise" (it should be revolutionize). It's been brought to my attention that revolutionise is used in the UK. Chrome marked it as misspelled, so that was my mistake trusting it. It's always good to be wary of misspelled words though.

4. The email formatting looks different than previous emails I've received. The header caught my attention first, but the footer is also different as well.

5. The website prolific.com is clearly unfinished. The popup doesn't save your choice, and the icon/info in the tab is missing (at least on Chrome). Generally, a legit company won't redirect users until at least the landing page is polished.

When you see these kind of red flags, you should always be cautious. You shouldn't sign in using your credentials until you know it's legit. In this case, I checked their blog to see if anything was mentioned. I did not see anything there, so I emailed the original website's (prolific.co) support. They got back to me saying it was legit, so we now know we can trust the new website.

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