How-To Geek

I am not sure where I should post this question. In my online experiences I have stumbled across various websites for performing the duty of doing background checks. It is a long story, but today My Dad wanted to see if he could obtain his birth certificate over the internet. On eHow.com there is an article called How to Prove Your Date of Birth http://www.ehow.com/how_818676.....birth.html within the article there is list of Sponsored Links. He tried Birth Records Search

1) Enter Any Name & Search It! 2) Get Birth Records Info Instantly
birthrecords.us.org

The site looks legit but what I am wondering is how do you guys test to see if a site like this is really legit?

I block all the ads so I couldn't tell you. sorry

You could also run a whois search on who.is to check the owner and registrar of the site, if the information looks funny then it's probably best to steer clear. You can make note of the domain name in the browser's status bar (just the main domain i.e. example.com) when you hover the mouse pointer over the link and run a search for the owner of the site, if it seems like it's registered to a legitimate company that will also help you make the decision to use them.