You've found a product. You think it's good. But you're just not sure. What will tip you over the edge to make that purchase decision?

For many people it's reviews on consumer protection websites. These are sites that warn you to stay away from certain products while reviewing and recommending others.

The problem is that many of these consumer protection websites are set up by the owners of the products themselves. In fact some consumer protection companies in the past have gone so far as to set themselves up as a 501(3)(C) organization with nonprofit status in order to lend even more credibility to their recommendations.

And don't be bamboozled by website names. Just because a site has "authority" or "official" or even "government" in it's name doesn't mean it's a credible site. Anybody can buy a domain name with these words in it. You'll probably recognize this as a offshoot of the old direct mail trick of sending mailings in official looking envelopes. Anyone who's ever opened up one of those mailings and become instantly annoyed will know what I mean.

The worst part is that fake consumer protection sites are probably found most often by people searching for work at home jobs or work at home businesses. And often these people are desperate to find work and make quick decisions without regard to logic.

Legitimate consumer protection sites can be broken down into several categories. The following are just a few of these categories.

The first consumer protection sites are ones run by the government. Any site ending with ".gov" is a legitimate U.S. government site. Many sites ending with .us are state or local U.S. government sites. But don't always count on it because it is possible for individuals and companies to register .us domains. However, it's usually pretty easy to figure out if a .us site is a legitimate government site or not.

Then there are well know consumer protection sites such as BBB.org, Fraud.org, of course ConsumerReports.org are sites that have proven themselves to be reliable over time. However you still need to use these sites in conjunction with other resources. For example, just because the BBB lists multiple complaints against a company doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad company. You still need to know the volume of business the company does since obviously 100 complaints against a company that does 500 transactions per year is much different than 100 complaints against a company that does 500,000 transactions per year.

One other thing you should know about well known, legitimate consumer protection sites is that sometimes websites will hijack their logo and place it on their website to make their own site look more credible. In other words, they are using an unapproved logo on their website. There are two extra steps you should take when you see a consumer protection organization's logo on a website. One, you should click on the logo as most legitimate consumer protection logos are clickable and will take you to the members directory. If the logo isn't clickable you should see if there's a members directory on the consumer protection website and try to locate the website in the members directory.

A trickier area is affiliate review sites which generate their profits by generating commissions from products sold via their reviews. The paradox is that some of the best reviews of products are found at affiliate review sites that have a loyal following because many affiliate review websites have built up a loyal following and they aren't willing to make a bad recommendation to make a buck and lose their audience. To evaluate the reliability of an affiliate review site don't just look at the products they do and don't recommend. You should also look at what negative comments they make about the products that they do recommend and whether they identify for whom the product may be a good fit and for whom it may not be a suitable fit. Certainly there is no perfect product and there is also no perfect product for everyone, so if a reviewer claims to have found a perfect product, be very wary of the recommendation.

There are certainly other categories of consumer protection websites and other tricks that the bad guys play to make you believe that their legitimate. But hopefully this information will help you navigate the often tricky waters of product reviews and consumer protection websites.